LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OE AMERICA. 



[Green Fund Book, No. 9 a,] 

A NEW LIFE 

IN 

EDUCATION. 



By FLETCHER DURELL, Ph. D. (Princeton.) 
Professor in Dickinson College. 



Z^^HIGht^^^ 







A FBIZE BOOK. 



^^•5^^' 



PHILADELPHIA : 

THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 

1 122 Chestnut Street; 

1894. 

[Copyright, 1894, by The American Sunday -School Union.] 



f 



/ 



The Libr;^k^ 
OF Cong K ESS 



^ 






THE JOHN C. GREEN FOND BOOKS. 



This volume has been prepared aod is issued under the 
provisions of the John C. Green Income Fund. The Fund 
was founded in 1877, with the cordial concurrence of Mrs. 
Green, by Robert Lenox Kennedy, on behalf of the residuary 
legatees of John C. Green. Among other things, it is pro- 
vided by the deeds of gift and of trust that one-sixth of the 
net interest and income of this Fund shall be set aside ; and 
whenever the same shall amount to one thousand dollars 
the Board of Oflficers and Managers of the American Sun- 
day-School Union shall apply the income *^for the purpose 
of aiding them in securing a Sunday-school literature of the 
highest order of merit." This may be done "either by- 
procuring works upon a given subject germane to the ob- 
jects of the Society, to be written or compiled by authors 
of established reputation and known ability, . . . or by 
offering premiums for manuscripts suitable for publication 
by said Union, in accordance with the purposes and objects 
of its institution, ... in such form and manner as the 
Board of Officers and Managers may determine. '^ 

The premium plan is to be followed at least once out of 
every three times. 

It is further required that the manuscripts procured under 
this Fund shall become the exclusive property of the Amer- 
ican Sunday-School Union, with no charge for copyright to 
purchasers of the book, it being the intention of the Trust 
to reduce the selling price of works issued under the provi- 
sions of the Fund. 

(3) 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 



This work received the first prize of SIX HUNDRED DOL- 
LARS offered by The Americau Sunday-School UnioDj under 
the provisions of the John C. Green Income Fund. The 
Society in March 1892 made the offer of one thousand dol- 
lars in prizes on the following terms : 

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN PRIZES. 

The American Sunday-School Union offers One TJiousand 
Dollars in two premiums : |600 for the best book, and $400 
for the next best book written for the Society, on 

The Christian Nurture and Education of Youth for tlie 
Twentieth Century. 

Each writer will be expected to suggest an appropriate 
title to his work ; and will be allowed the widest practica- 
ble freedom in the form and style of treatment : e. g. didac- 
tic, descriptive, narrative, or a tale illustrating the princi- 
ples and methods of education and upbringing. The 
Society seeks practical and useful works. The books should 
be free, however, from the prejudice and bias of current 
controversies. 

The works must be popular in character of a " high order 
of merit,'' and each consist of not less than 50,000 nor 
more than 100,000 words. 

The MSS. must be submitted to the Committee of Publi- 
cation on or before October 1, 1893. Each MS. should have 
a special mark, and the name and address of the author 
should be sent at the same time in a sealed envelope (not 
to be opened until after the award) bearing the same mark, 
and both addressed, post or express prepaid, to The Ameri- 
can Sunday-School Union, 1122 Chestnut Street, Philadel- 
phia, Pa. 

(5) 



b PUBLISHER S PEEFACE. 

The two MSS. gaining the prizes are to become the exclu- 
sive property of the Union, and the prizes will be paid when 
the copyrights of the same are secured by the Society. 

The Society reserves the right to decline any and all MSS. 
offered, if unsuitable for its purpose. 

Unaccepted MSS. will be returned to the writers at their 
expense. 

These prizes are offered in accordance with the terms and 
conditions of the John C. Green Fund. 

THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
1122 Chestnut Street. 



AWARDS OP PREMIUMS. 

The American Sunday-School Union, in March, 1892, 
offered two premiums; one of $600 for the best book, and 
one of $400 for the next best book, written for the Society, 
on ^' The Christian Nurture and Education of Youth 
FOR the Twentieth Century. ^^ These MSS. were to be 
submitted to the Society on or before October 1, 1893. At 
the November meeting of the Board, the Committee re- 
ported the results of its examination of the MSS. The 
premium of $600 was awarded to the MS. entitled, "A New 
Life in Education, by I. L. L. J." The second premium 
of $400 was awarded to the MS. entitled, "How John and 
I Brought Up the Child, by John's Wife.'' Upon opening 
the sealed envelopes, after the awards were made, it was 
found that the first work was written by "F. Durell, of 
Carlisle, Pa.," and the second by *' Mrs. Elizabeth Grinnell, 
of Pasadena, California.'^ 



PREFACE. 



This book is written with a double purpose, to 
discuss, first, the place of the religious (as includ- 
ing the moral) element in education ; and, second, 
the place and function of the highest type of edu- 
cation, in the immediate future. It will be found, 
however, that in the treatment these purposes 
merge or coalesce into one. Bej^ond this, the 
views herein expressed suflflciently explain them- 
selves. It may be of interest to some to know that 
these views are the outgrowth of the study and 
teaching of subjects mainly scientific in character. 

The sources of the material used being familiar 
and easily accessible to the reading public, and it 
being the intention to have the book as far as pos- 
sible a pictorial argument, I have not deemed it 
advisable to cumber the pages with detailed refer- 
ences or footnotes. The main sources of informa- 
tion, and notes on matters needing further explana- 
tion, are given in an appendix. Special mention 
however, should be made of my debt to the ex« 

(7) 



8 PREFACE. 

tremely useful Reports of the Commissioner of 
Education. 

I wish also to make acknowledgement of the aid, 
direct and indirect, in the preparation of this book, 
given me by m}^ former colleague, Prof. Robert W. 
Rogers, now Professor of Hebrew and Old Testa- 
ment Exegesis in Drew Theological Seminary. 
My best thanks are due to my present colleague, 
Prof. Bradford 0. Mclntire, for aid in reading the 
proof and for rhetorical corrections and other 
changes. The editor of The American Sunday- 
School Union, has also made several important 
suggestions, which I have been glad to adopt. 

Fletcher Durell. ' 
Carlisle, Pa., March 19^ 189 ^, 

N. B. The Index figures in the text of the work, 
refer to notes in the Appendix, at the end of the 
volume. 



SYLLABUS. 

CHAPTER I. 

A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 

A Contrast — Increase of Formal Education 
— Increase of Informal Education — Lifelong 
Education — Vistas of Need — A Concrete Basis 
— Communication — Transportation — Production 
— Problems Unsolved — First Transforming 
Agencies — I. Business Power — II. Government 
by the People — III. Other First Transforming 
Agencies — A G-eneral Survey — Place of Concen- 
trating Need and Opportunity. . . . Pages 13-42 

CHAPTER II. 

THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHEIST. 

The Old and the New — Search for the New^ — 
Illustration of the New — Forms of the New — 
Limitations of the New — Jewish Education — 
Galilee — Unfolding of Jesus' Mind — Jesus as a 
Teacher — Features of Jesus' Method — Christian 
Education in Three Senses. .... 43-64 

CHAPTER IIL 

EXPANSION. 

Two Elements in Growth — Expansion Hlus- 
trated — L Magnitude Expansion — II. Diversity 
Expansion — Value of Expansion — I. In Assimila- 
tion — II. In Discovery — IIL In Practical Life — 
Means of Attaining Expansion — Difficulties and 
Limitations — Expanding Power in Moral and 
Religious Ideas, . . .... 65-86 

CHAPTER IV. 

ORGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS* 

Second Part of Growth — Organization as a 
Process — Accuracy the Basis of Organization — 
Illustrations- — Fruits of Accuracy — Combination 

(9) 



10 SYLLABUS. 

of Expansion and Accuracy — Individuality — In- 
clusiveness — Productiveness — Means of Attain- 
ing Trutli-Organization — Conscience and Ke- 
ligion as Organizers. . . . . Pages 87-106 

CHAPTER Y. 

THE WILL. 

Third Element in Growth— The Will a Factor 
in Expansion — Factor in Organization — The 
Will in the Future — Education of the Will — Re- 
lation of Will to Religion — The Trinity of 
Growth 107-120 

CHAPTER VL 

A NEW BODY. 

The Changed Ideal — Nerve, Brain and Activ- 
ity—Physical Expansion — Physical Organiza- 
tion—The Physical Will— The Swedish System 
— German and English Systems — Other Ele- 
ments of Physical Life — Selection and Adaption 
—The Christian Ideal 121-146 

CHAPTER YII. 

ADULT EDUCATION. 

The People's Purpose — In the Land of Philos- 
ophy and Science — In the Land of Arts — In a 
Remote Province — In the Land of Commerce 
and Dominion — In the Home Land — Woman's 
Place in Adult Education — Free Public Libra- 
ries — Value in Social Problems — Value in For- 
mal Education — Immigration and Heredity — 
The Religious Element in Adult Education. . 147-163 

CHAPTER VIIL 

THE USE OF BOOKS. 

The Wealth of Books— The Problem— The 
Great Books — Searching out the Essence — As- 
similation of the Essence — The Princess' Quest. . 164-177 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE TEACHEE. 

Three Great Systems — The Teacher in the 
Jewish System — In the Jesuit System — In the 



SYLLABUS. 11 

Grerraan System — A Fundamental and Difficult 
Problem — Dramatic Power — The Teacher a Stu- 
dent — Experimentation — A Teaching Era — The 
Religious Spirit in the Teacher — Hints of this 
Spirit — Two Great Teachers — Pestalozzi — 
Thomas Arnold— The Ideal Teacher. . Pages 178-206 

CHAPTER X. 

MORAL AND EELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN ITSELF. 
Most Important Single Element — Moral and 
Religious Acts the Most Numerous — The Most 
Important — The Most Difficult — Relation to the 
Future — delation to the so-called Practical Life 
and Education — Its Inclusive Relations — Value 
Increases with Amount — The Absolute Value- 
Conclusions of Educators. 207-222 

CHAPTER XL 

THE PEACTICAL PKOBLEM. 

Separation Education — Religious Education 
Adapted — Secular Education Adapted — Value 
of a Closer Union — Sectarian Education — A Prot- 
estant Experience — A Catholic Experience — 
Other Instances — Semi-sectarian Education. . 223-242 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE SUBSTANCE OF EELIGION IN EDUCATION. 
An Aggressive Substance — A First Essence : 
A Common Fact and Act — Common Feeling — 
Common Activities — Use of the First Essence — 
Essence Developed into Substance: Develop- 
ment of the Fundamental Religious Act — It is 
the Simplest Act — The Most Fundamentally 
Constructive Act — Its Universality — Extended 
Use of the Primal Religious Act — The Whole 
Developed Essence — Development of a General 
Idealism : Germs of Idealism — Culmination of 
Idealism in Religious Ideas — Idealism and Re- 
ligion Develop Each Other — Practical Aspects : 
Attitude of Agnostics — Attitude of Denomina- 
tions — Relation to Education as It Is— Relation 
to the World as It Is — Arnold ^s Method — Jesus' 
Method— A Symbol of the New Life. . . 243-281 
Appendix 283 



A mw LIFE IN EDUCATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

A HEEITAGE AND A NEED. 

A CONTRAST. 

AS the world advances the function of the teacher 
becomes more and more important. Among 
uncivilized peoples there are no specific, organized 
educating agencies. All education is incidental 
to and a part of other pursuits and pleasures. 
But, in proportion as the world advances, pro- 
fessional teachers appear in all lines and areas 
of work and pleasure. Take the contrast, in this 
respect, between the land in which we live as it was 
four hundred years ago and as it is now. Then 
there was not a single trained teacher amid all the 
populations of this vast country, now there are 
three hundred thousand of them ; then there was 
not a single school child, now there are fifteen mil- 
lions ; then not a single wigwam devoted to the 
purposes of instruction, now two hundred thousand 
buildings devoted to the work of the most intense, 
exclusive education, some of them palaces in splen- 
dor and beauty ; then not a single string of wam- 

(13) 



14 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

pum expended for purposes of either abstract or 
directly practical instruction, now $150,000,000 of 
the public money is so expended, which sum is sup- 
plemented by an increasing and rising tide of pri- 
vate benefaction. * 

I. INCREASE OF FORMAL EDUCATION. 

This fact of the increasing function of the teacher 
is realized in a somewhat different way, if we con- 
sider the increasing number of occupations — the 
preparation for which is handed over more or less 
to the instructor. The first teachers gave instruc- 
tion in only here and there a subject or a calling, 
which for the time being was regarded as particu- 
larly important. ]N"ot many centuries ago only two 
occupations had distinct, adapted, preliminary 
training — war and the priesthood. " The education 
of the middle ages was either that of the cloister 

or the castle The object of the one 

was to form the young monk, of the other the 
young knight.'' Since then not only have the 
military academy and the theological seminary 
been developed, but also schools adapted to prepare 
one for almost any form of work or pleasure. 

As the world has advanced, more phases and 
elements of life have been made departments of 
distinct training. In each an abstract essence of 
principles has been wrought out. This is early 
trained into the mind, and is later used everywhere 
in its appropriate area of work, and is built up and 
around with details and developed into new forms 



A HEKITAGE AKD A KEED. 16 

as occasion may require. Men, who formerly would 
have scratched in the earth with rude shovels in 
search of ore, without a thought of previous school- 
ing for the occupation, are now trained into mining 
engineers. Men, who once could have measured a 
piece of land only as they had seen their fathers do 
it, by ploughing it with oxen and counting the 
days occupied, are now trained as civil engineers. 
Schools for journalism, business, cookery, sewing, 
dress-making, millinery, replace the incidental and 
desultory instruction of former days given by the 
editor to his assistant, by the business man to his 
clerk, by the mother to her daughter. Carpenters 
are coming to be trained, not as apprentices, but in 
manual training schools. Politics is taught in 
universities. Agriculture in which formerl}- there 
was only such instruction as the farmer gave his 
sons and hired men, has now become the field of 
labor of a host of different kinds of teachers, men 
that teach chemistry and botany and surveying, 
and the combination of these and other sciences, as 
agriculture itself. Art and bicycle-riding alike, and 
all forms of esthetics and amusement are taught. 
Even the play of children has been handed over to 
the teacher in the kindergarten to be made more 
fruitful. Even teaching itself has been made the 
subject of instruction, and men are taught how to 
teach. 

II. INCREASE OF INFORMAL EDUCATION. 

Thus various kinds and portions of what was 



16 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

once incidentally and accidentally conveyed inform- 
ation have been converted into departments of 
specific, professional education. But not only has 
the amount of professional teaching thus increased, 
the amount of lay or incidental teaching has won- 
derfully increased also. The extension of profes- 
sional teaching has not diminished, it has rather 
enlarged the amount of lay teaching. Taking edu- 
cation in its broadest sense, every man, as has 
often been remarked, is educated by all whom he 
meets, by all of his surroundings, and by many of 
them profoundly. Their primary and conscious or 
intended purpose is usually something else, and 3^et 
many of them are so intensely educative as to form 
almost specific educators. Travel has cheapened 
till it is to some extent within the reach of all. 

Photographs and various pictorial illustrations 
are so numerous, and fiction depicting the habits and 
life of other lands is so abundant and excellent and 
costs so little, that all can supplement travel or in- 
deed multiply it by their use. Newspapers are 
manifold teachers. All these are powerful educa- 
tors, and the increase in their number and excel- 
lence has been prodigious. Every advertiser is an 
educator. Every man with a new idea or inven- 
tion, in order to reap the fruits of it or make it 
fruitful in the lives of others, must instruct the 
public. Every political campaign is a factor in 
national education. The preacher educates his 
congregation, the lawyer his client and jury, the 
business man his employees and patronizing public, 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 17 

and in the rush of modern life each of these is doing 
his work with greater care and intensity. Indeed, 
to-day, almost every man to succeed must carefully 
educate a clientage. In all lines men have been 
compelled to convert themselves more and more 
into teachers. Man's success depends increasingly 
on his ability to teach in all sorts of ways, and to 
be taught in like manner. 

in. LIFELONG EDUCATION. 

Not only is it found that a specific education, a 
period of training pure and simple, is more and 
more necessary in every department of life and 
work, but it is also being realized that there is in- 
creasing need that this education be continued 
throughout life. In an ever greater number of 
departments, a single period of training at the 
outset is found to be insufficient. Men must be 
constantly learning new methods. The world 
makes fossils ever more rapidly. Once this process 
occupied thousands of years. Now ten 3^ears is 
sufficient for it. The physician to do his work in 
the best way, must not only learn as best he can 
constantly, but more and more he must also occa- 
sionally, if possible, give up a year's practice and 
devote the time exclusively to study in some insti- 
tution. The clergyman often does likewise. 

The teacher devotes some vacations to studj^ in 
some school ; in many colleges each professor is 
sent off at stated intervals for a year's study in 
some advanced institution at home or abroad to mas- 

2 



18 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION, 

ter the newest methods in his specialty. Just as 
the manufacturer counts on making some changes 
constantly, and also, at stated periods, on removing 
bodily large sections of his machinery and sending 
them to the junk shop and replacing them by more 
powerful and improved machinery, so must every 
first-class worker both constantly and periodicall}'' 
renew himself. He must learn and relearn new 
information. He must train and retrain himself 
in new methods. He must be constantly and re- 
peatedly educated. 

VISTAS OF NEED. 

Thus the advance of the world life has been 
marked by an advancing and developing system 
of education. Nor has the limit of usefulness of 
this agency yet been reached. Education having 
extended itself throughout the main elements of 
life and the entire duration of life, needs further to 
extend itself in detail and among all peoples, and 
also to complete and perfect all its present numer- 
ous functions. But most of all it needs to be ele- 
vated in function to the highest point, that is inten- 
sified and idealized in every possible way. There 
is an increasing demand for the utmost use of its 
highest offices and for the development in it of 
new and more elevated, more spiritual functions, 
if possible. Its powers have been extended in 
the past, they now need to be exalted to the high- 
est pitch. If we examine some features of that 
heritage, which the twentieth century is about to 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 19 

receive from the nmeteenth, this overwhelming need 
for the utmost exercise and development of the 
higher and more spiritual functions of education 
will everywhere appear. 

A CONCRETE BASIS. 

The nineteenth century will hand down to the 
twentieth a material civilization which has sud- 
denly outrun all other factors and elements in the 
developing world life. Material progress has been 
so swift J and men are so immersed in the vast proc- 
esses of further concrete development, that they do 
not often pause to contemplate properly how much 
has already been accomplished. Furthermore, the 
results already attained are so unevenly distributed 
and often so imperfectly applied, that when men do 
pause to examine they do not rightly estimate 
them. Rightly estimated, it is no exaggeration to 
say that the problem of a material basis for a new 
and better world has, in many respects, been solved. 
A sufficient material basis, in fact or in method, 
has been laid for that Utopia, that Millenium, that 
Kingdom of God, of which men have dreamed in 
all ages. 

I. COMMUNICATION. 

In the first place, the problem of communication, 
of the conveyance swiftly, universally, and at small 
cost among men, of knowledge, thought and sym- 
pathy, has been solved. The telegraph and tele- 
phone, the printing-press and post-office already 



20 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

answer every practical purpose. All important 
facts and sympathies, the death of a president, the 
emancipation of a race, the discovery of a new 
principle, may at once be made known throughout 
the world at little expense and trouble, and men 
can act upon them unitedly and harmoniously if 
they desire so to act. 

As Joseph Cook says, when cable lines now in 
process of construction are linished, it will be pos- 
sible to send a message round the world seven 
times in an hour. It is possible now to communi- 
cate with three-fourths of the missionaries in the 
world, from any large city, within a day. Other 
inventions may give new facilities of communi- 
cation to supplement those we now have. The 
telautograph may enable one to w^rite a message 
on the other side of the globe. What seems at 
present the wild dream of being able by use of 
electricity to see what is happening at the end of 
a line on another continent ma}^ be realized in the 
future. But without another invention of this 
kind, without a single new facility of communi- 
cation beyond those which we already possess, meth- 
ods for the mechanical exchange of fact, thought 
and sympathy, adequate to the harmonious de- 
velopment and reciprocal enrichment of all lives, 
have been wrought out. 

II. TRANSPORTATION. 

The problem of transportation has also been suf- 
ficiently solved by the railroad and steamship in 



A HEBITAGE AND A NEED. 21 

their various types. By these, wheat is carried 
from both Dakota and India to London without 
adding an undue percentage to its cost, and is thus 
made to feed advantageously the millions of a me- 
tropolis on the other side of the globe. The lus- 
cious, but perishable fruits of California are trans- 
ported in like manner. Aye, the dressed fresh 
meats of Australia are now being carried to Lon- 
don in increasing quantities, so that the present 
system of transportation enables one part of the 
world to profitably feed on the perishable products 
of its antipodes. What is true of the food neces- 
sities of life is true also for some of its delicate, 
esthetic luxuries. The orange blossoms of Florida 
are sent and carry their perfume over a large part 
of the United States. Cut flowers packed in New 
York are delivered in unimpaired freshness in 
Paris. 

New facilities of transportation may come. 
Some form of electrical propulsion, substituting 
the purely rotary motion of the motor for the 
reciprocating action of piston and rod, may double 
the speed of our trains. Competent authorities 
assert that with proper road-bed and equipment 
there is no reason why a train driven by elec- 
tricity should not move with a speed of one hun- 
dred and fifty or two hundred miles an hour. 
Aerial navigation may even surpass this both in 
speed and economy. But as the matter stands at 
present, so far as exchanging readily the best prod- 
ucts of any one land with the best from all the rest 



22 A KEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

of the world is concerned, without adding materially 
to their cost, all that is necessary has already been 
achieved, and thus another wall has been built in 
the foundation of a new and better world life. 

III. PRODUCTION. 

The problem of production has also been ade- 
quately solved. In fact over-production is the cry 
almost everywhere, the curtailment of production 
has become a prominent feature of modern business 
life. A small per cent.^ of the land in our South- 
ern States will produce all the cotton the world can 
use. A small fraction of the West will produce 
enough wheat to make bread for the world. The 
merest extension of the process we now know, the 
merest duplication of the machinery we now pos- 
sess, would enable us to feed the world properly 
without effort, to clothe the world properl}^, and 
also to bestow upon all human beings the principal 
luxuries of life. On the one hand, this has been 
accomplished by the vast developments of labor- 
saving machinery, by putting life, thought itself, 
into iron and wood. 

As an illustration of the brain which acts in steel 
and steam the world over, take the wonderful ma- 
chine which has been invented for weaving that 
difficult fiber, horse=hair. The fibers to be woven 
are short, of unequal length, considerably thicker 
at one end than the other, very elastic and so hard 
that they will speedily wear away the hardest steel 
over which they may be dragged. The machine 



A HERITAGE AKD A NEED. 23 

has a shuttle with a pair of jaws, and a hand which 
picks up one hair and only one, and presents it to 
the jaws of the shuttle. The hand must let go at 
the very instant the shuttle takes hold, otherwise 
the hair would be dragged through its fingers, 
which would soon be worn away. Sometimes how- 
ever the fingers fail to grasp this single hair. It 
makes then a second try, and, if the second fail, 
yet a third. Supposing the third attempt also 
prove unsuccessful, there being no time for a fourth, 
the hand promptly stops the weft motion, so that 
no change takes place, whilst the shuttle is making 
its traverse without a hair to form the weft. Such 
a machine may be taken as a miniature representa- 
tion of all our present vast system of perfected 
machinery, the world over. 

Not only are machines vast labor performers, 
they serve and aid each other. On one of our 
great steamships beside the main engines, there 
are numerous auxiliary engines, which aid and act 
with the main engines as if they were intelligent, 
titanic beings. Smaller engines feed coal to the 
larger, fan the draught, withdraw waste ; hydraulic 
engines steer and hoist ; other engines run auxili- 
ary boats. The British war vessel Victoria had 
eighty-eight'^ of these auxiliar}^ engines interacting 
with or supplementary to the main engines. The 
modern steamship may be said to be manned with 
a crew of engines as well as a crew of men. So do 
machines interact and aid each other in all lines of 
productive activity. Steam ploughs prepare the 



24 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

way for the drill, the drill for the reaper and binder, 
the binder feeds the threshing machine, the thresh- 
ing machine feeds the flour mill, the flour mill and 
bakery hand their produce to the locomotive and 
steamboat and thus feed the world. 

The problems also, of the discovery and mastery 
of material, and of physical force, out of which and 
by which to make products, have been adequately 
solved. Every continent is now fairly opened, and 
all are found to be full of wealth of soil and min- 
eral. Coal is found in all parts of the world. The 
steam engines of the world, by the use of coal, now 
do the work of one thousand millions of men.^ 
There are twice as many men of steam in the 
world as there are men of flesh and blood, and they 
are all intensely working. Each man on the aver- 
age the world over, has two slaves of steam work- 
ing for him. Force to sustain these and to make 
any needed multitudes like them is at hand. Coal 
will supply the world with force for some thousands 
of years to come. When coal is exhausted, we know 
that a vast store of unused force exists in sun- 
light, only one thousandth part of it being at pres- 
ent used by man and vegetation together. The 
sunlight that falls on New York city and Brooklyn 
would if collected run all the steam engines of the 
world.* Enough sunlight falls on the state of 
Pennsylvania, to make every man within its bound- 
aries a millionaire inside of a week. Hence we say 
the problem of production is essentially solved. 

A thousand million of steam men are at work in 



A HERITAGE AND A KEED. 25 

the world. In labor performing machinery we have 
at least two thousand millions^ of men of steel and 
iron working by their side. The world over, six 
steam and iron slaves are working for every man. 
In the United States, eighteen of these are working 
for every man, six for every individual. At the 
time of Christ, there were sixty millions of slaves 
in the Roman Empire ; there are four thousand 
millions of machinery slaves in the modern world. . 
Those hosts of bondsmen who created a material 
basis for the vast civilization of the ancient world 
are now replaced by vastly more numerous hosts of 
workmen, vaporous yet most substantial, creating 
and alread}^ having largel}^ created, a concrete basis 
for that immeasurably superior modern world life 
which is to come. 

PROBLEMS UNSOLVED. 

It is thus clear that the problems of commun- 
ication, of transportation, of manufacture, of the 
discovery of force and material, have all been 
essentially solved. In this difficult work of creat- 
ing a material basis for a new and better world, 
education has had an increasingly prominent part. 
But there yet remains the more difficult problem 
of actually building a new and better world life on 
this material basis, of converting all our manifold 
wealth and power into the highest life. Iron has 
been millenialized but the human soul has not. In 
this remaining work, education is called to act a 
still more prominent part. If in the nineteenth 



26 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION". 

century education has been important, in tlie 
twentieth century, education, taken in its broadest 
sense, must be supreme. Material development 
left to itself does not rise into a higher, symmet- 
rical life ; on the contrary, it, in the main, gravi- 
tates downward, and that with crushing force at 
places. 

Great Britain and the United States have led 
in this material development, and have a richer 
concrete basis on which to build a new and better 
life than exists in any other lands, yet both these 
countries abound in want and vice. Increased 
wealth of itself has had no power to produce a 
millenial life. In England during the past four 
centuries, wealth has increased seventeenfold,® 
while the population has increased only fourfold, 
yet to-day in London ^' considerably over one-tenth 
of the deaths are in the workhouses." " In the 
United States fifty years ago practically no pov- 
erty existed in the sense that men willing to work 
could not procure the necessities of life," yet there 
now exist in every great city of the land, masses 
of confirmed vice and destitution. In New York 
city nearly the same proportion are buried in the 
Potter's field that die in the workhouses in Lon- 
don. In 1890 there were twenty-three thousand 
evictions in New York city for unpaid rent. In the 
United States in the past fifty years, wealth has 
increased tenfold and population only threefold, 
yet the last census shows the existence of over 
nine millions of mortgages. In the face of all 



A HEEITAGE AND A NEED. 27 

our material deTelopment, want and discontent 
have developed on a gigantic scale, and so plainly 
that all the splendor of it cannot irradiate the facts 
out of sight. New York and London, the two 
great population centers of the world, the two 
great wealth centers, are also in many respects the 
two great misery centers of the world. 

The problem of production has been solved, but 
the problems of distribution and transmutation re- 
main. Privilege and duty alike demand that every 
energ}^ of attention and earnest work be directed 
to them. If there be any power in education in 
general, or in any form of education, direct or 
indirect, or in education re-developed in more 
vital alliance with Christian truths, to help men 
evolve a proportionate and uniform higher life out 
of a great material basis ; any power to make it 
easier for all to become in many senses the pos- 
sessors of all ; any power to teach rich and poor 
alike out of how small a basis of concrete a com- 
plete and enduring life may be developed ; any 
power to transmute riches of steam and steel, elec- 
tricity and gold into a higher wealth of ideal and 
spiritual life ; in a word, any power to make moral 
and religious development more swift, easy and 
natural, the twentieth century will demand the full 
exercise of this power. 

FIRST TRANSFORMING AGENCIES. 

A further examination of some other elements 
of the heritage which the twentieth century is 



28 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

about to receive from the nineteenth only serves to 
emphasize the conclusions already reached. In 
several civilized countries not only is a sufficient 
material basis already attained either actually or 
potentially, but also certain first steps in the trans- 
mutation of this basis into higher life have been 
taken, and certain needed powers of higher organ- 
ization evolved. A look at these steps of achieved 
progress will show that they do not lessen but 
rather specialize, elevate and emphasize the need 
of education. 

I. BUSINESS POWER. 

First, is to be mentioned the business or practical 
power of the age. This has developed itself on a 
scale and to an intensity, and extended itself with a 
universality quite unparalleled in the past. Along 
with the development of the material basis and yet 
quite above this, has come a power to see and grasp 
its elements, to use them together, to organize them 
into most fruitful interaction, for a desired, concrete 
purpose. The value of push, pluck, punctuality, 
organization, exactness, good faith, in all immedi- 
ately practical affairs is understood as never before. 

Many splendid and striking illustrations of this 
practical power are constantly appearing. A few 
years ago a great railway was pushed out over our 
unsettled western country faster than the exploring 
expedition of Lewis and Clark travelled through 
the same region ^; ten mUes of track were both 
graded and laid in a single day, over five hundred 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 29 

miles were graded and six hundred miles laid in 
seven months, and this though every pound of food 
used hy laborers and every bushel of oats consumed 
by animals had to be transported into the unpro- 
ductive country. The Dakotas, where in 1869 not 
one bushel of wheat was raised, in 1887 produced 
fifty millions of bushels. The Philadelphia Record 
recently celebrated an anniversary by making a 
tree into newspapers in the shortest possible time. 
The standing tree was cut down, the wood made 
into pulp, the pulp into paper, the paper printed 
upon with news from all the world, and put into 
the hands of the reader, all within twenty-two 
hours' time. The first white child born outside the 
walls at Fort Dearborn is still living as a not very 
old man, who can boast Chicago as his native place, 
and can see the civilization of the world summed 
up both in that great city itself, and in its World's 
Fair. 

This business spirit is making itself felt through- 
out all instrumentalities of work, and is helping 
to transform them into more adequate agencies 
for the development of the world life. Every 
man is compelled yearly to be more and more 
of a business man, or at least to become closelj^ 
associated with business friends with whom he can 
consult and who will perhaps direct certain ele- 
ments and aspects of his life. Every man , if he is 
not one himself, needs a business manager. The 
pastor of a church has an increasing number of 
business interests to direct. The president of a 



80 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

college must be first of all successful from a busi- 
ness point of view. Among lawyers, business not 
criminal or constitutional lawyers are now the 
leading class. There is a general demand that or- 
ganizations be conducted on business principles, 
that the state and general governments be so con- 
ducted. Civil Service Reform is but an expression 
of this principle. 

This influence is affecting public speaking, lit* 
erature and art. Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
not long ago made the remark that within his rec- 
ollection, the style of public speaking at Harvard 
Commencements had completely changed. The 
old oratory of the soaring inflated style, had been 
replaced by common-sense discussion, pointed mat- 
ter-of-fact statement. Taking it in all its forms, 
actual and potential, there seems to be enough 
practical power in the world to grasp and manipu- 
late the material basis and make a first transforma- 
tion of it. 

This is of the utmost value as far as it goes. 
It is a first step, an essential element in the 
higher transformation of the world. Its value as 
such is seen for example in the creation of the Un- 
iversity of Chicago, where was accomplished in 
three years, what would have been the work of 
three centuries by the old methods ; it is seen in 
fact in the creation of what is approximately a 
system of higher universities in the United States 
in less than a generation ; it is seen, to give another 
illustration, in the marvellous organization of for- 



A HEEITAGE AND A KEED« 31 

eign Christian missions which now cover the world 
and are telling with such fruitful power upon the 
fabric of old beliefs and civilizations as in Japan 
and India. 

But this development of practical business 
power does not lessen, rather it both increases 
and elevates the function of education. It in- 
creases the function of education, in that educa- 
tion is needed to sustain and propagate the new 
practical spirit. It elevates its function in that, 
in proportion to the practical power possessed, 
there is need of idealism, both intellectual and re- 
ligious, to control the practical spirit and make it 
fruitful in the highest way. At the same time, 
this increase of practical power makes the elevation 
of the office of education possible. It gives 
opportunity to devote more exclusive attention to 
the higher functions of education. The value of 
business knowledge and method is so immediate 
and concrete, the returns are so swift and vivid, 
that the practical spirit is largely self-sustaining 
and propagative. Popular demand will keep edu- 
cation keyed up to its work in this respect and 
will create numerous assistant educational agencies 
to aid in this work, running through all elements 
and phases of life. In proportion as the first or 
practical transformation thus takes care of itself 
will there be room to devote attention to the higher 
transformations. There are thus both need and 
opportunity to lay explicit and increasing stress on 
education of the highest sort. 



S2 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

II. GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. 

Another of the first steps being taken, and 
powers envolved for the transformation of the ma- 
terial basis into a higher and more symmetrical 
life, is seen in the extension and development of 
popular government. The recent formation of 
Brazil into a republic called forcible attention to 
this. It was noticed that by this event not only 
the last empire in the Western world but also the 
last independent monarchy formed out of a Euro- 
pean colony, became a republic. It also occasioned 
a close survey of the state and progress of the 
world with respect to popular government. '^ Out 
of four hundred millions included in the population 
of all the countries recognized as civilized, at least 
one hundred and fifty millions, more than one in 
three, are under republican government. Add 
Great Britain, Canada and Australia, whose free 
institutions are separated by the merest ceremonial 
survivals, from the republican government, and half 
of the civilized world is republican — even counting 
Russia's seventy millions as civilized. And what 
a half it is ! It holds two-thirds of the railroads, 
nine-tenths of the tonnage, and the same fraction 
of tlie steam-power, the coal raised and the iron 
made. It spins two-thirds of the cotton and wool 
and has all but five or six per cent, of the daily 
papers. Four of the six cities over a million in 
the civilized world, Paris, New York, Chicago and 
Philadelphia, are all within republics, and the fifth, 
London, is ruled by its own democracy. Only Ber- 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 33 

lin,and possibly a seventh Yienna, are under a gov- 
ernment not republican in its tendency." Most.of 
^' the wealth, the intelligence, the manufactures, the 
trade, and the happiness of the world are under 
governments republican in form " or in essence and 
are thus in the hands of the people. 

The people are also learning to use their pos- 
sessions, material and political, year by year, for 
higher purposes. They are learning to trans- 
form more powerfully and fruitfully the material 
by use of the political. 

Popular government is rapidly developing itself 
intensively as well as extensively. Each year the 
people are learning better what they want, what is 
best both for them and all the world as a unit, and 
what practical measures to take in order to secure 
their ends. Each decade witnesses some new ad- 
vance in popular rights, and some new gain in in- 
telligence as to how to use those rights. Compare 
the French people as they were one hundred years 
ago and as they are now ; then confiscating the 
wealth of aristocrats and revenues of the church, 
now taxing themselves to spend millions on educa- 
tion ; then inventing the guillotine, now multiply- 
ing printing-presses ; then with swords in their 
hands, now with books and the pen. During the 
French Revolution each class of the French nation 
had absolute power, once in the descent from the 
monarchy of the old regime to the Reign of Terror, 
and once again in the reaction back to the monarchy 
of Napoleon, yet none knew how to use their power 

3 



34 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

SO as to establish a new and better order of things. 
Compare the numerous radical .experiments of 
that era, with the present orderly advance into a 
higher political life. Compare also the monarchies of 
the rest of Europe as one hundred years ago they 
were warring on the young republic, with the peo- 
ples of the rest of Europe to-day imitating France 
and flocking to learn of her at her Universal Expo- 
sitions. Compare also England at the time of the 
American Revolution, intent on coercing her colo- 
nies, with the England of to-day giving essential 
self-government to her national offspring as fast as 
they are able to use it. Compare Germany of 
forty years ago, its people ignorant of the very 
rudiments of self-government, some of the provin- 
cial diets being dismissed because they neither 
knew what they wanted nor how to act, with the 
Germany of to-day, the repressed will of the people 
compelling the Kaiser, with the greatest army of 
history at his back, to yield or concede not once 
but often. 

Literature, perhaps, as sensitively as anything 
else reflects the spirit of the age. The literature 
of to-day is the people's. The time is not far 
in the past when almost all literary men were 
but ornaments of the court, as they were in 
Louis the Fourteenth's day, or servants of the 
nobility. Tennyson was the last poet of the ari 
tocracy and even he conceded much to the people. 
The literature of to-day is addressed to the people, 
and gets its vital inspiration from them. 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 35 

This development of popular government is one 
of the first steps in the transformation of the 
world, an essential element in the making of a 
higher life. The world must be elevated as a unit, 
by the people themselves, or not at all. It how- 
ever does not diminish, it rather increases and ele- 
vates the function of education. 

Daniel Webster said in a characteristic way, 
" On the diffusion of education among the people 
rests the preservation and perpetuation of our free 
institutions." But education has a higher function 
than the preservative, the safe-guard one, in con- 
nection with government by the people. In pro- 
portion as self-government becomes easy and nat- 
ural, that is organic and self-perpetuative and 
self-propagative, a higher and higher tj^pe of edu- 
cation is needed in order to develop and enjoy all 
the possible fruits of such government. For both 
of these reasons education needs to be as religious 
as possible. De Tocqueville says, ^' Despotism may 
govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Relig- 
ion is much more necessary in the republic which 
they set forth in glowing colors than in the mon- 
archy which they attack ; it is more needed in 
democratic republics than in any others. How is 
it possible that societies should escape destruction 
if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion 
as the political tie is relaxed ? And what can be 
done with a people who are their own masters, if 
they be not submissive to the Deity ? " But more 
even than this can be said. The religious spirit is 



36 A NEW LIFE m EDUCATION. 

needed in a people not merely for its usefulness as 
a safeguard, to preserve and perpetuate free insti- 
tutions. It is needed in order to develop such in- 
stitutions into their full fruitage. For both these 
reasons, in proportion as free government spreads 
and intensifies, education should not only be made 
general, but spiritualized in every possible way. 

III. OTHER FIRST TRANSFORMING AGENCIES. 

An examination of other first-transformation 
agencies, as journalism, the scientific spirit of the 
age, ecclesiastical freedom, already adequately de- 
veloped in some respect and at work on the mate- 
rial basis, would lead to the same conclusion already 
expressed with regard to the education needed 
by the twentieth century. With the evolution of 
every form of practical or semi-practical power, 
the more intense does the need of education be- 
come, the more elevated is the type of education 
demanded. 

A GENERAL SURVEY. 

The material basis and its first-transforming 
agencies exist in achieved actuality in only a small 
part of the world, though in adequate potentiality 
with reference to the rest. The twentieth century 
may see them actually and fully developed over 
much of the rest of the world. What will be the 
meaning of this actual development to the subject 
in hand ? A brief survey, using this broader out- 
look will show the immensity of the material re- 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 37 

suits that will thus be achieved, and will add the 
most pronounced emphasis to our past conclusions. 

The smallness of the area within which the past 
development of the world has mainly taken place 
has often been a subject of remark. All the prin- 
cipal results of the past history of the world have 
been achieved within a single narrow belt of the 
Northern Hemisphere, between the 30th and 50th 
parallels of latitude. This zone has been the path 
of empire from India to California. Within this 
narrow area '' the great commanders, orators, phil- 
osophers, and prophets of the world have been 
born " ; within it, its Saviour taught and was cruci- 
fied ; its decisive battles were fought, its victories 
over men and nature won, the past triumphs of 
humanity and civilization achieved. As a conse- 
quence here only in actuality exists the completed 
basis of a new life. In other words but a fraction 
of the North Temperate Zone has hitherto been 
fully utilized by man. At the present time, the 
limitation is in some respects still greater. Only 
two continents, Europe and North America, one 
of these being much the least considerable of all 
the continents, has been pierced through and 
through from sea to sea by railroads. Not much 
more than half of Europe, certainly much less 
than half of North America have been anything 
like fully developed in the modern sense. 

The great Torrid Zone, containing two-thirds of 
South America and three-fourths of Africa, with its 
unrivalled wealth of soil and sunshine has been 



38 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

scarcely touched. The vast wealth of this zone 
has been too intense for man's control and utiliza- 
tion by past methods. Its manifold vegetation 
thrown upward by the moist and burning soil, 
drawn upward by the fall direct rays of the sun, 
with an almost visible velocity and irresistible 
momentum, have hitherto flung aside both laborer 
and plough. But man is now advancing to the 
conquest of this tumultuous wealth with more 
powerful implements and forces, with steam in one 
hand and electricity in the other, and riding upon 
those many chariots of industry, which, in Mr. 
Ingalls' phase, have made agriculture " a seden- 
tary occupation." The intense tropic fire is to be 
subdued into manageable and unspeakable wealth. 
The English have projected, and in large part con- 
structed, a telegraph line^ from the Cape of Good 
Hope to Cairo. A railroad has been surveyed 
from the mouth of the Congo to Stanley Pool, and 
the most difficult part of it constructed ; thirty 
steamboats already ply the Congo ; a railroad is 
projected from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. 
Thus Africa will, in the near future, be split 
through from one end to the other with electricity, 
and from side to side with steam. A railroad is 
already in successful operation in Portuguese ter- 
ritory in Africa, and it is reported that the natives 
soon became used to it and patronize it so that 
it is likely to be profitable. The French have 
struck clear into the heart of the Sahara with a 
railroad, and propose to extend the line to the head 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 39 

of the Nile. There is no more striking illustration 
of the changes wrought in a hundred years, than 
the contrast between the French monarch Napol- 
eon in 1796, subduing fertile Egypt with cannon 
and gunpowder, and the French people in 1893 
subduing the barren Sahara with artesian wells 
and railways. 

Similar movements are stirring South America, 
One railroad already stretches from ocean to ocean, 
though the valley of the Amazon, garden of the 
whole world, is still practically untouched. 

The vast conservatism of Asia is being roused 
by such movements as the building of the trans- 
Siberian railroad, to be the longest in the world, 
the development of India and Japan. China is 
being attacked from four sides : from Siberia by 
the Russians, from the Pacific by civilization in 
general, in the South and West by the French 
and English, who are racing for the regions 
more remote from Pekin, and are projecting rail- 
ways thither. As in Africa so in Asia, one feature 
of the development strikingly illustrates the prog- 
ress of a century. A little less than one hundred 
years ago, the French Emperor fought the battle 
and sullied his fame with the massacre of Acre. 
To-day the French People have just completed a 
railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and have pro- 
jected and more than half constructed a far greater 
one from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. 

Thus the nineteenth century, beside the heritage 
already described, in addition to the two continents 



40 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

whicli are well developed materially and partially 
transformed, will hand down to the twentieth cen- 
tury the three richest of the continents, newl}^- 
opened for development, together with the wealth 
and instruments with which to complete the con- 
crete part of this work. To transform these con- 
tinents aright, the best method of education is 
needed from the start. To urge on South America 
to an equal pace with the rest of the world, to tear 
and dissolve the conservatism of Asia, welding as 
it does niore than one-half the human race into an 
inert mass, to light up Africa and take from it the 
reproach of being the continent brightest in sun- 
shine but darkest in ignorance and superstition ; 
to preserve the populations of all these continents 
and develop them as essential, useful, equal parts 
of the world life, demands the utmost use of every 
scientific and ideal power in education and Chris- 
tianity alike. As the transformation of these conti- 
nents goes on and new wealths and new knowl- 
edges pour back from them, and a new and incon- 
ceivably rich material basis of life is everywhere 
created, every pure and lofty resource will be 
taxed to control it and transmute it into higher 
life in the most fruitful way. A new education 
exceeding the present by virtue of its scientific 
accuracy and lofty idealism, as steam does the 
stage coach, will find adequate employment. The 
utmost eflSciency in religious life and method will 
be called for. Particularly, if there be any new 
power in a closer and more vital union of religion 



A HERITAGE AND A NEED. 41 

and education, the utmost development and use of 
this power will be demanded. 

PLACE OF CONCENTRATING NEED AND OPPORTUNITY. 

Many of the facts and conclusions which have 
been presented in the preceding discussion apply 
with peculiar force to the United States. In this 
land the twentieth century will find the richest 
and fullest material basis for a new life. Here is 
more steam power, more applied electricity than in 
any other country, here more wheat is raised, more 
iron is produced, more coal is mined ; here are 
one-half the railroads of the world. Here every 
form of practical and semi-practical power is at 
work on the most extensive scale. Here popular 
government is most fully developed. More than 
this, the United States is occupying a more central 
and commanding position in the world life year by 
year. As Charles Dudley Warner points out, this 
land is no longer at the end of the world, it is a 
central point of its surface, nearer China than any 
other civilized country, nearer South America, and 
near many parts of Africa ; when a Nicaraugua or a 
Panama Canal shall have been completed, our coun- 
try will be at the middle of the world's greatest 
highway, with an unavoidable commanding influence 
in the two greatest oceans. Alreadj^ immigration 
•makes this country the home, the gathering point 
of the nations. Who can fortell the privileges and 
responsibilities of this position even in the near 
future ? 



42 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

Here then, if we measure existing resources, 
the problem of making an adequate material basis 
into higher life should be first solved. Here for 
the world's good, it should be first solved. If all 
our practical power is in this land made more effi- 
cient for higher purposes, the whole world life will 
be affected more rapidly and joowerfully than it 
could be from any other center. Yet with all these 
advantages and all these possibilities of useful 
work, the United States has its negro question, its 
liquor question, its capital and labor question, its 
immigration question, all demanding solution be- 
fore, or at least as a part of any general upward 
movement. Surely here must men bend every ef- 
fort to the discovery and utmost development of 
every educational and religious resource. If there 
be any peculiar virtue in Christian education, 
Christian education is here needed in its highest 
possible form. If there be any unused power in 
education to give new efficiency to Christianity, or 
in Christianity to give new power to education, or 
in a combination of the two to set great elevating 
forces at work in the world, the utmost use of such 
power is needed by the century that lies before us, 
and most of all in our own land. 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 

THE OLD AND THE NEW. 

LESS than seventy years ago, when the black- 
board was invented, its introduction into Yale 
College was marked by a rebellion of the students.^ 
They had been accustomed to recite the geometry 
of the conic sections with their books open before 
them, explaining the work from the printed figures, 
and they objected to being required to demonstrate, 
without the aid of the text-book, from figures 
drawn on the blackboard. The incident throws 
light on the methods of teaching geometry in 
vogue not many 3^ears ago. Now, in almost all 
schools, the student is required not merely to re- 
cite independently of the book, but also to work out 
and demonstrate by his own unaided efforts a large 
body of geometrical truth. 

Scarcely more than a generation ago almost the 
only method of teaching arithmetic in general 
use, was to give the pupil a set of rules without 
proof or reason ; then to place examples before the 
pupil, to each of which a given answer was to be 
obtained b}^ the use of some one of the given me- 
chanical rules. The particular rule to be used in 
the solution of an example was either shown the 

(43) 



44 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION, 

pupil, or was left to be determined by him by guess 
and trial till lie obtained the assigned answer. In 
this way the same text-book was worked over win- 
ter after winter till, in the ease of nine-tenths of 
pupils, utter disgust for the stud}^ had been gener- 
ated, in the case of one-tenth a sort of mechanical 
facility had been obtained, which however was often 
of little use in the practical work of life. 

Under present methods the teacher begins in- 
struction in arithmetic by putting pebbles, or 
straws, or similar concrete objects in the hands 
of the child, and asking him to separate or 
combine them in groups. In this simple and 
pleasing way the child gets its first ideas of the 
science of number. Blocks of wood, or squares of 
pasteboard show the properties of fractions, the 
child passes on from concrete object to abstract 
idea, gladly realizing that the latter gives greater 
facility and power, and thus step by step a rational 
conception of number and its properties is built up. 

SEARCH FOR THE NEW. 

These changes are but illustrations of a great 
general change that has come over the spirit of 
education in recent years. One social reform and 
one crying need after another have led men back 
into the school-room for a remedy. It has gradu- 
ally come to be realized that here is the great fun- 
damental place of cure and source of power ; that 
in the problem of the world's reformation here is 
the place of fundamental reform ; that if the prob- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 45 

lem of sure, full, righteous development of substan- 
tially all minds and souls could be solved, all else 
that is needed to make a better world would swiftly 
come as resulting details. Men have slowly learned 
that in the mind of the young child is the one 
great magazine of unused wealth, the store-house 
of future power. Having learned this, men have 
set themselves to work with untiring energy, to 
search out every such source of new power in the 
youthful mind. Every implement of science, every 
resource of experiment and exact measurement, 
every extreme of self-sacrifice have been employed. 
Men have given up all else in life that they might 
be perfectly as little children, and thus learn some- 
thing new of mind-growth. They have felt their 
way down into the young mind and groped and 
listened if haply they might find some new secret 
of power. 

The result is a body of generally accepted new 
truth and method which is gradually finding its 
way into educational practice. It is being gen- 
erally realized that the young mind should be- 
gin not with abstractions and generalities, but 
with the simple and concrete, and learn all it can 
about these, and thence proceed for the sake of 
clearly realized advantages to the abstract and 
general. The" young mind is first concerned with 
things, with seeing and touching them, learning 
all it can concretely of them. It goes on to use 
words because it finds out that words are briefer 
than things, more transportable and exchangeable ; 



46 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

words enable one to share easily one's knowledge 
with others, and to get in return the fruit of their 
labors. The child then goes on to use symbols, be- 
cause he realizes that symbols are briefer than words, 
and the use of them gives new advantages. If he 
begins the study of botany, it is by planting seeds 
and watching them grow, or by gathering flowers 
and noting individual interesting facts, till at last 
the accumulation of scattered concrete facts leads 
him to welcome a more abstract and systematic 
study of the subject, in order that he may keep an 
easy mastery of what he knows and go out into a 
wider mastery. 

ILLUSTRATION OF THE NEW. 

Perhaps the best way to make clear and vivid 
the essence and spirit of the new method will be to 
quote fully from one particular case. A teacher 
having a class of boys of eleven or twelve years of 
age with whom he associates freely, in preparing 
them for a course in formal geometry, proceeds 
thus^ : "' Taking the boys for a walk, I drew their 
attention to the shape of the lot on which their 
house stood. Its depth was nearly thrice its width, 
and a low fence surrounded it. As we went along 
the road, we noticed the shapes of other fenced lots 
and fields. Counting our paces and noting their 
number, we walked around two of the latter. This 
established the fact that both fields were square, 
and that while the area of one was an acre and a 
half, that of the other was ten. When we returned 



THE NEW EDUCATIOK AND CHRIST. 47 

home, the bo3^s were asked to make drawmgs of 
the house lot, and of the two square fields/' By 
measurement of the drawings they were led up to 
the general fact that " of lots of practicable form, 
square ones need least fencing, and of this fact 
they wrote out a formal statement." 

"• One chilly evening the sitting-room in which 
my pupils and I sat was warmed by a grate-fire. 
Shaking out some small live coals, I bade the 
boys observe which of them turned black soon- 
est. They were quick to see that the smallest 
did, but they were unable to tell why. They 
were reminded of the rule they had committed 
to paper, but to no purpose, until I broke a 
large glowing coal into a score of fragments 
which became black almost at once. Then one 
of them cried 'Why, smashing that coal gave it 
more surface I ' This young fellow was studying 
the elements of astronomy at school, so I had him 
give us some account of how the planets diff'er 
from one another in size, how the moon compares 
with the earth in mass, and how vastly larger than 
any of its worlds is the sun. Explaining to him 
the theory of the solar sj^ stem's fiery origin, I 
shall not soon forget his keen delight — in which 
the others presently shared — when it burst upon 
him that because the moon is much smaller than 
the earth it must be much colder ; that, indeed, it 
is a small cinder compared with a large one. It 
was easy to advance from this to understanding 
why Jupiter, with eleven times the diameter of the 



48 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

earth, still glows faintly in the sky." By similar 
examples, the pupils were led up to the general 
principle that " Like solids vary in surface as the 
square, and in contents as the cube of their like 

dimensions Not far from home stood a 

large store, displaying a miscellaneous stock of 
groceries, fruits, dry goods, shoes and so on. As 
we cast our eyes about its shelves, counters and 
floor, we saw many kinds of packages — cans of fish, 
marmalade, and oil, glass jars of preserves and 
olives, boxes of rice and starch, large paper sacks 
of flour. Outside the door stood half-a-dozen empty 
barrels and packing-cases. It certainlj^ seamed as 
if the cost of paper, glass, tin, and lumber for 
packages must be an important item in retailing. 
One after another the boys discovered that the 
store was giving them their old lesson in a new 
form. They saw that the larger a jar or box, the 
less material it needed. On their return home 
they were gradually led up to finding that form as 
well as size is an element in economy. Just as 
farms, square in shape, need least fence, they found 
that a cubical package needs least material to 
make it, and that tins of cylindrical form require 
least metal when of equal breadth and height." 

Thus the boys accumulated interesting geometri- 
cal knowledge till at last they were ready wdth 
pleasure to take up a thorough course in deductive 
geometry, where they found that all the separate 
truths they had learned were in a sense but re- 
statements of each other ; all were composed of the 



THE XEW EDUCATIOI^ AND CHRIST. 49 

same few elementary truths, and hence were in- 
timately related, and always available together. 
Having acquired them in the first place in the con- 
crete, they were also ready to apply them, either 
singly or as a deductive whole, to other concrete ; 
to use them as a string on which to hang the 
truths of other sciences, as Botany and Engineer- 
ing. 

FORMS OF THE NEW. 

This then is the essence of the new method, to 
assimilate the interesting concrete first, and then 
go on to the abstract and general ; to learn meas- 
urement and drawing before geometry, conversa- 
tion before grammar, local topography and imita- 
tion modelling of it in sand before geography, in a 
word to follow and aid the natural growth proc- 
esses of the mind. According as the method has 
been applied to difi'erent branches of study and to 
minds in different stages of development, it has 
taken different forms and names. It is first seen 
in the kindergarten, it becomes the object lesson, 
manual training is a part of it. Where, as in cer- 
tain methods of studying geometry, the student 
works out all for himself, it is called the heuristic 
or self-discovery method. When, as in the modern 
method of studjdng history, the student takes the 
different original documents and material, and the 
related geographical and commercial data and com- 
pares the different accounts of events and draws 
his own conclusions, it is the laboratory method. 



60 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

In the study of language, it becomes the natural 
method. In the more advanced studies, the pre- 
liminary concrete course may be greatly abbrevi- 
ated. In fact the student is so taught to observe 
from the outset that he constantly accumulates a 
general body of material, which serves in part or 
in whole as a preliminary concrete course for after 
subjects as he comes to them, and which he appar- 
ently sometimes takes up at once in the deductive 
form. 

But however different some of the outward forms, 
there are everywhere in the new method, the 
first preliminary course and afterward the de- 
ductive course, the student moving along in them 
by self-activity. Even where not formally adopted, 
the new method has profoundly modified all previ- 
ously existing methods of instruction. The kin- 
dergarten songs have spread and are used gener- 
ally in the elementary schools. Students in all 
lines are set to work observing, collecting facts, 
classifying, investigating. Thus, though the pupil 
study Latin in the old wa}^, he may be required as 
he reads Yirgil, to observe facts and collect data 
relating to the religious ideas of the Romans, or 
their social customs, or some similar subject, and 
make a formal statement of these facts and infer- 
ences ; this is using the new method in connection 
with the old. Rote-teaching, grading-sy stems, and 
other mechanical devices, by which the old systems 
were bolstered up, have been modified or abolished. 
In a word the attitude of the teacher and the pupil 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 51 

toward each other and toward knowledge, have 
been made radically different. The whole concep- 
tion of education has been vivified and renewed. 

LIMITATIONS OF THE NEW. 

What then have been the results of these new 
methods in education ? Valuable as have been the 
gains in certain cases, it is not too much to say 
that the general results have as yet, fallen below 
expectation. Herbert Spencer, one of the most 
earnest advocates of the new system, said some 
years ago, " So far as we can gather, the Pestaloz- 
zian schools have not turned out any unusual pro- 
portion of distinguished men, if even they have 
reached the average," and then went on to give 
what seems to him the explanation. Recently, 
Nature^ the leading English scientific weekly, 
expresses the opinion that the results of the new 
science education in Great Britain have been dis- 
appointing. There is general complaint that when 
children educated in the ^kindergarten go on to 
other schools, they '' neither know how to work nor 
how to play." The German schools are said to 
produce many thoroughly cultured and evenly 
trained minds, but great men are made no more 
common among them than in the days of Kant 
and Lessing. In general, it is patent that there is 
nowhere any new great abundance of powerful 
minds arising out of our schools. The problem of 
a sure development of practically all into a full, 



52 A NEW LIFE IN EDUOATIOK. 

intense and righteous manhood has not 3^et been 
solved. 

Many particular defects, many undeveloped feat- 
ures of the new education might be pointed out 
which perhaps to some extent account for its lack 
of sweeping success, but to our mind the funda- 
mental defect, and the one which more or less 
includes all the rest, is that the proper ideal- 
ism has not yet been developed out of the new 
fundamental ideas. There is abundant material 
out of which to make, and increasing need for new 
idealism, but concrete truths have become so mul- 
titudinous and attractive that they have come to 
fill the lives of men with a kind of finality. Ideal- 
ism as a goal, as a summation-fruitage of all the 
new as well as old elements of life has been lost 
sight of by most minds. Prince Kropotkin has 
shown some realization of the defects of the pres- 
ent new system of education, in his advocacy of a 
change in the methods of teaching the beginner 
geography. He would teach not merely local to- 
pography at the outset, that is give a knowledge 
of the native town and its neighboring hills, val- 
leys, and streams, but also teach at the ver^^ start 
the general fact that the earth is a globe. 

This is an illustration of what will be found true 
of all the new education. In all departments, the 
most general and elevated views should be obtained 
and used as soon as can be, at the outset if possible. 
Education has received some new life^ but this is 
largely a physical, or concrete life. It needs a 



THE NEW EDUCATIOK AKD CHEIST. 53 

complete new life. If we go back at once to the 
great fountain source and inspiration of what is 
best in modern idealism, we find there a striking 
parallel and a profound and far-reaching clue to 
the investigation of this subject. 

JEWISH EDUCATION. 

Jewish education had much in common with the 
education of one hundred years ago, and in partic- 
ular it had the same two fundamental faults which 
we are now trying to eradicate from the methods 
which we have inherited. Jewish schools were 
said to be more numerous than synagogues. Ac- 
cording to a significant tradition, one hundred 
and fifty years before the time of Christ a school^ 
had been put in every village by the high priest 
Joshua son of Gamla, and education been made 
compulsory. It was unlawful for a Jew to live in 
a place where there was no school. It was the law 
that a synagogue might be converted into an 
academy, but not an academy into a synagogue, 
because an academy was regarded as the more 
sacred. 

The prevalent system of education had many feat- 
ures that were sound and meritorious, but it had, in 
Judaea particularly, two fundamental faults, vitiat- 
ing what was otherwise valuable in it. In the first 
place, authority was carried to its highest pitch, 
traditionalism was developed to crushing perfec- 
tion. The method of teaching was to lay down a 
principle and prove it from former teachings. The 



54 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

sa^angs of the Rabbis '' were to be absolutely be- 
lieved even if they were to declare that- to be on 
the right hand which was at the left, and vice 
versa." Traditionalism was carried so far that 
the great Hillel was wont to mispronounce a word 
because his teacher before him had done so. The 
ultimate appeal in cases of discussion was not to 
reason or conscience or experiment, but " to some 
great authority, whether an individual Teacher, or 
a decree by the Sanhedrin. . . To decide differently 
from authority, was either the mark of ignorant 
assumption or the outcome of daring rebellion, in 
either case to be visited with the ban." Out of this 
worship of authority and the sayings of others 
grew the second fault, the method of merely verb- 
alizing, of juggling with words and symbols. 

All must be proved from the words of others, 
hence the most extraordinary liberties came to be 
taken with those words, in order to make former 
sayings fit present needs and desires. Undue rev- 
erence for the formula led to the most irreverent 
treatment of it. Words were isolated and inter- 
preted apart from the rest of the text. Words 
were shifted about, parts of letters even (^' iotas ") 
were transposed. Pla}" on words or parts of words 
\v^s permitted. The allegorical interpretation was 
put above the literal. One allegorical interpreta- 
tion was made the basis of another built upon it. 
This juggling was carried so far as to impair that 
reverence for authority from which it sprang. It 
came to be that '' one of the highest marks of dis- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 55 

tinction in a Rabbi was to be able to prove creep- 
ing things clean, though the Talmud said the re- 
verse," Their system had made the Law mechan- 
ical, they had built about the Law a hedge of fan- 
tastically derived laws, the Talmud, higher than 
the Law itself, and yet word-juggling was superior 
to this higher Law. 

GALILEE. 

But while what has been said applies with full 
force to Judaea, it was essentially different in Gali- 
lee, the country in which Jesus' life was unfolded. 
The Galileans were a practical people, busy with 
the concrete affairs of life, and seemed not to care to 
spend their lives in hair-splitting and verbalizing. 
Galilee produced only four Rabbis, and the most 
noted of these was the champion of common-sense 
interpretations of the Law. There were no learned 
Rabbis in Nazareth. In fact, the Galileans, taking 
as they often did, independent views of the Law and 
inclining to the "more mild and rational interpreta- 
tions, came to be looked down on as neglecting tra- 
ditionalism and unable to rise to its speculative 
heights." Nevertheless they possessed a practical 
earnestness and broad common-sense knowledge of 
the world which gave them perhaps a more vital grasp 
of the essence of the Law and Prophets than the 
Judseans had. The caravan routes from the Med- 
iterranean to Palmyra and the East ran through 
Galilee, while Judsea to the South was relatively 
isolated and visited only by religious devotees. 



66 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

Galilee was fertile, filled with a busy, teeming pop- 
ulation, while the gray heights of Judaea were com- 
paratively barren and sparsely inhabited. The 
Northern people did not themselves question the 
ministry and orthodoxy of Jesus; the practical 
results of his work and the evident genuineness of 
his words and principles were enough for them. 
The Scribes and Pharisees from Judsea stirred up 
all the trouble in Galilee. ^ 

UNFOLDING OF JESUS' MIND. 

It is full of meaning to us, in this century, 
that Jesus' divine truth, his supreme idealism 
were first revealed as a crown to a busy, practical 
life. Jesus' own training grasped this broad, active, 
concrete basis. He was a carpenter and knew how 
to measure and construct. Climbing to the top of 
the hill near Nazareth he saw the Mediterranean 
with its many sails, the commerce of the world 
white before him. At his feet through Nazareth 
ran a great caravan route to the East. In it he saw 
moving, Egyptian and Persian, Roman soldier and 
Greek tradesman, the land commerce of the world. 
Looking up the valley he saw for sixty miles a 
country of unbroken fertility. Thus his mind 
spead out over the busy practical world. Here he 
studied nature also most thoroughly. He learned 
to know the fox, the sparrow, the scorpion, the 
vine. Hence as his mind was unfolded in and about 
his home and in school, it was unfolded in an atmos- 
phere where his own divine idealism had less obsta- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 57 

cle than in the Sonth. At any rate in the unfold- 
ing of Christ's life, rising as it does out of the busy 
tides of action to the loftiest excellence of truth and 
sacrifice, we have a model of development set be- 
fore us. In all our theory and practice of educa- 
tion, we have taken only a few short steps in imita- 
tion of that model. 

JESUS AS A TEACHER. 

Perhaps of even deeper significance to us is 
Jesus' own method as a teacher from whatever 
standpoint his teaching be viewed. An examin- 
ation shows that modern teachers, in all that is 
best in the vaunted new education, have but just 
learned the beginnings of his method. All that is 
best in the modern educational methods is found in 
Christ's method. Moreover, we think too, the cure 
of the defects and limitations of the new education, 
the germ of all that is needed to complete it, and 
make it truly eflfective is found there too. 

Jesus' method was to take the busy, practical life 
about him, and from it rise to the loftiest spiritual 
truth, so stating this truth that it spread over all 
life with vivifying power and application every- 
where. He began, as the modern teacher has just 
been learning to do, with the actual life and world 
about him. When talking to the woman of Sama- 
ria he pointed to the well and the water, and spoke 
of fountains springing up. When Nicodemus came 
to him at night in the early spring time, he spoke 
of the high March wind, which even then perhaps 



68 A NEW LIFE IN DEUCATIOlSr. 

could be heard blowing roughly through the neigh- 
boring streets of Jerusalem, and of whence it Com- 
eth and whither it goeth. The first place to which 
he took his disciples was the wedding at Cana of 
Galilee, where more of life and human nature at its 
best could be seen than anywhere else. On the 
other hand it is a significant fact that when he was 
in the city, he was wont to resort to the garden of 
Gethsemane with his disciples and thus keep them 
near the heart of nature. With his disciples he 
went back and forth through the land seeing the 
world both of men and nature as it was and 
teaching them from it. He used the sparrow, the 
widow's mite, the vine, the fox, the lily of the field, 
the praying Pharisee and Publican which they saw, 
as starting points for his instruction. When from 
a Doat on the shore of Galilee he explained to the 
assembled multitude the kingdom of God, he began 
with no abstract declaration of the authority of this 
kingdom, but rather by pointing to fields lately 
planted and saying " a sower went forth to sow." 
In the first five parables, the kingdom of God 
in its various aspects is exhibited as a growth such 
as is seen in objects near at hand. He was the 
paragon of object lesson teachers, as when he took 
a little child and set him in their midst. It makes 
this part of his method impressively vivid to us, to 
think that with all his infinite wisdom, he not only 
thus took what his hearers had just seen or were 
even then looking at, as the starting point of his 
instruction, but that he often also prepared the way 



THE KEW EDUCATIOK AND CHEIST. 59 

for his instruction by some practical act of help or 
healing. Thus he on one occasion aided fishermen 
in their work and then taught them to be fishers of 
men. On another occasion, he drove the dealers in 
merchandise from the temple, and then called in the 
people and taught them. 

But Jesus did also what the modern teacher has 
not learned to do in anything like an adequate way, 
he rose from all starting-points to universal spirit- 
ual truth. With the woman of Samaria, he passed 
on to speak of that water of life, of which if a man 
drink he shall never thirst. To Nicodemus he 
spoke of the mystery of regeneration, applying the 
truth not only to Nicodemus, but to all the world. 
To sowing and reaping, to growth in all aspects, he 
gave a universpJ meaning. In the Sermon on the 
Mount he rose from allusions to the oppressed, 
down-trodden condition of those before him, to gen- 
eral, moral and spiritual principles and then applied 
these to all relations and elements of life. In the 
ruins of the synagogue at Capernaum has recently 
been found the cross-piece that was once over the 
entrance door, and on it is carved a pot of manna. 
On a certain occasion it is said that Christ followed 
by a multitude entered a synagogue of Capernaum 
and he preached to them saying, ^* Our fathers did 
eat manna in the wilderness." He used as a basis 
of instruction that which he and the people must 
have just seen as they entered the building. But 
he did not stop there, he rose at once to the saving 
declaration " I am that bread of life.'' 



60 A NEW LIFE IN EDtJCATION. 

The difference between Rabbinic teaching and 
Jesus' method, is vividly shown at the Feast of the 
Tabernacles during the last year of his ministry. 
At the close of this feast it was the custom for a pro- 
cession led by priests, to fetch water from the Pool 
of Siloam and pour out the same at an altar in the 
court of the Temple. It had long been a question 
of dispute in the schools, whether the water should 
be poured in a funnel at the top of the altar or at 
the base. One high-|)riest had ventured to pour it 
in at the base, and had by this act brought on a riot 
in which six thousand people perished. But Jesus 
stands at this feast and cries, '' If any man thirst, 
let him come unto me." The essence of all concrete 
ceremony is thus applied w^ith life-saving power to 
all men. Thus in all his teaching Jesus ever rose 
to a lofty idealism. He everywhere presents and 
makes final and supreme that ideal upper half, 
.which modern education in a great degree so 
lamentably lacks. 

FEATURES OF JESUS' METHOD. 

Jesus not only perfected the general plan of 
education, he also perfected essentially, each ele- 
ment and principle of education. Methods, some 
of which modern teachers use reluctantly, others 
of which they exaggerate, and some of which they 
cannot yse harmoniously together, Jesus takes 
and not only does he powerfully develop and freely 
use each one, he also uses all together not merely 
in harmony but with fruitful, interacting power. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHRIST. 61 

Modern education ^' shuns the symbol preferring 
the real." It uses the symbol only when com- 
pelled to do so in order to master the real. It 
prefers the real, so-called, to such an extent that 
the material, the concrete to vast multitudes is 
coming to mean all of life. But much as the mod- 
ern world makes of the real, it is not too much to 
say that Jesus makes more of it, that is, of the 
real essence of it. His parables are an example of 
this. These are not mere concrete illustrations of 
moral and religious truth ; rather they are them- 
selves the truth, the spiritual framework in all 
material things laid bare here for a little space, a 
hand breadth. Jesus takes the busy practical 
world about him, and cancels out the fleeting and 
superficial, and reveals a divine worth in each part 
of it with universal relations. Hence when he 
comes to the symbol, this is but the essential part 
of the reality. It is not a mere arbitrarily chosen 
representative of the concrete, it is the actual, 
inner part of the real condensed. Such sj^mbols 
have an aggressive, elevating power which the re- 
luctantly used symbols of the modern world cannot 
have. Thus in Jesus' teaching, the concrete and 
the s3^mbol both mean more than elsewhere, and 
they are used harmoniously because they are in 
essence one. 

Again there is to-day a general outcry against 
learning by heart, a tendency to relegate memor- 
izing to the place of a merely unconscious element 
in education. Pestalozzi would not allow his 



62 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

pupils to memorize. But Jesus taught his dis- 
ciples the Lord's Prayer and many intense and 
pointed statements of his doctrine. He perfected 
principles into rules, not rules like guide-boards 
but like the magnetic compass. Jesus knew He- 
brew, Greek, and perhaps Latin, beside his native 
Aramaean, and quoted freely from the Septuagint 
and in such a way as to give a powerful impetus 
to his discourses. Yet so harmoniously does this 
element of his teaching work in with the rest that 
the casual reader scarcely notices it. 

Modern education shuns the use of authority in 
presenting truth, while the old Rabbinic method 
used it altogether. Jesus distinguishes between 
the authority of names and traditions, and that 
of the truth itself. That truth which, if accepted 
in a childlike way, will demonstrate its saving and 
developing power, he taught with authority. The 
principle of authority so used became a valuable 
element of power in his presentation of truth. 

Hence came the simplicity, directness, concentra- 
tion of Jesus' teaching, which, interacting with 
the fulness and vividness of his concrete instruc- 
tion, gives the whole, as a mere presentation of 
truth and apart from the nature of this truth as a 
revelation, such extraordinary power to every 
reader. It is a striking proof of the value of such 
authoritative teaching, as compared with the sham 
authority on which the scribes based all their in- 
struction, that it came to be said of him with a 
kind of unconscious irony, "• the people were as- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND CHEIST. 63 

tonished at his doctrine ; for he taught them as one 
having authority, and not as the scribes.'' 

Modern education aims to develop the individu- 
ality of each growing mind, so that, personalities 
being naturally diverse, each trained soul shall be 
a perfection of a new sort. Yet one of the com- 
plaints is that the new; education does not do this 
so well as the old methods often did, which were 
so defective perhaps that under them every re- 
markable mind developed itself in all its peculiar- 
ities. The new methods are merely interesting 
and efficient enough to carry most minds to the 
same general point of satisfactory development. 
Thus it is said that students educated in the Ger- 
man schools have a similarity among themselves, 
and a general thorough efficiency like the soldiers 
of the German army, but no Goethe or Kant arises. 
But Jesus' method, going so far beyond modern 
human methods, seems easily to accomplish the 
desired result. John, James, Peter, Matthew, 
Thomas, where shall we find five great men, com- 
panions so long, so different as these. It speaks 
volumes that ignorant men, with the fixed habits 
of adult life upon them, should be carried forward 
to such a pitch of development, but it speaks much 
more that the personality of each should at the 
same time be wrought out so exquisitely and pow- 
erfully. 

Thus we find in%Jesus' teaching all the valuable 
elements of a perfect educational method, each de^ 
veloped into extraordinary efficiency, yet no one 



64 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

of them presented with excessive, laborious for- 
mality ; no inductive method, or dogmatic method, 
or object lesson, or language, or memory methods, 
yet each distinct essence fully developed, all work- 
ing together in mutual helpfulness as an organic 
whole, each part applying itself with more fulness 
at any needed place, all crowned with a perfect, 
creative idealism. We find here the essence of all 
that is best in the new education, and the essence 
of all that is needed. 

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THREE SENSES. 

Christian education may be defined in a three- 
fold way : as, first, the method in which Christ's 
own soul was unfolded to the world ; and second, 
as the way in which Christ himself taught men ; 
and third, as a system of education in which Christ's 
truth is a leading, if not a predominant part. We 
have now considered the first two of these. We 
find indicated in them as in a vista, the further 
development which modern education needs. The 
details of this needed development will be best 
.considered in connection with and leading up to the 
third aspect of Christian education. This is the 
part of the subject which now lies before us. 



CHAPTER III. 
EXPANSION. 

TWO ELEMENTS IN GROWTH. 

GROWTH as a process is made up of two prin- 
ciiDal parts, enlargement and organization ; of 
enlargement, as when a small snowball grows to be 
a big one, or when one cell produces its like and 
these in turn a multitude of similar ones ; of or- 
ganization as when a mass of metal is made into a 
watch or an aggregate of cells into a system of 
organs aiding each other in the processes of life. 
Education takes the various elements of growth 
in the human being, and aids, economizes, sys- 
tematizes them. Our method of considering and 
determining the place of the moral and religious 
element in education, the place of that which is dis- 
tinctively known as Christianity, will be to consider 
its relation to the various elements of growth. 

EXPANSION ILLUSTRATED. 

First, then, in growth we have the element of ex- 
pansion. In Japan there are oaks which, though 
fifty years old, are not more than ten or twelve 
inches high.^ Some of these were exhibited in Lon- 
don a few years ago. On the other hand so mag- 
nificent is the growth of the oak in India, that 

5 (65) 



66 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

some species reach a height of over one hundred 
feet, have leaves over a foot long and acorns so 
large that the acorn cups are two-and-one-half inches 
in diameter. Of those persons in Europe and 
America familiar with the oak, probably not one in 
a dozen, perhaps in some cases not one in a thou- 
sand, ever thinks of the possibility of this tree 
being very different in any part of the world, from 
what it is in the home neighborhood. When one 
hears of these diverse forms of the oak which have 
been described, particularly of the giant oaks of 
India, there is experienced a mental expansion, an 
exhilaration, an enlargement of ideas. This illus- 
trates what is meant by the expansion element 
in mental growth. The simplest form of this is 
what may be termed magnitude expansion. 

MAGNITUDE EXPANSION. 

Everyone blest with eyesight during life time 
looks at the sky thousands of times, yet few ever 
try to stretch the mind to an adequate grasp of the 
sky as a vast sublime object. Let one think first 
of the small dome covering some court house bell, 
then of the dome of the capitol at Washington, 
then with increasing effort of a dome one-half a 
mile in diameter, and so on till in time some con- 
cej)tion of a sky many miles in diameter is formed. 

The conception is aided at first by thinking of the 
vault above us as made of blue steel and of the 
clouds as drapery upon it. Finally some conception 
of the celestial sphere such as the astronomer has 



EXPANSION. 67 

is arrived at. In all this process there is an effort, 
the mind quivers and totters as if it longed to be 
back in its old shrunk up state. But if the effort 
be persevered in, the mind gains a new quality of 
enlargement ; we may think of the brain cells as 
actually swollen and unable to shrink back to 
their former dimensions. Then the comprehension 
of all lesser magnitude, the enlargement of the 
ideas to all lesser degree is found to be easy. 

When we read of the butterflies of South America 
whose wings measure twelve inches across from tip 
to tip, of earthworms in Australia from two to 
three feet long, of fossil lizards^ eighty feet long, 
weighing twenty tons when alive : or of some vast 
enlargement in modern civilization which we must 
grasp and use if we would do our function in the 
world, as of sixty thousand new books published 
each year, of London as a cit}^ twenty miles in 
diameter, of various extensions and fluctuations 
of commerce, life and thought, to grasp these is 
not only easy but an exhilaration. 

Almost every intelligent person has heard that 
when the earth is moving most slowly, its velocity 
is eighteen miles a second. Yet to truly realize this 
requires much stretching of the ordinary mind. 
Let one think of some familiar part of a railroad 
route, eighteen miles long, of the villages and 
principal objects of interest along the track, then 
with the finger on the pulse and while the pulse 
beats once, let the mind flash past all these objects 
spread out along this space of eighteen miles. In 



68 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

this way by repeated effort some realization of plan- 
etary velocity may be arrived at. Perhaps the mind 
can go on developing thus and stretch itself to some 
conception of the velocity of light. Let one con- 
ceive of mirrors placed round the earth's equator, so 
that light will flash from one to the next and so on 
round the world. Then as we stand by its track 
with finger on the pulse, while the pulse beats once, 
the ray flashes past us eight times, and in each of 
the seven intervals we know that it has flashed 
once round the world, and if we can flash with it 
we realize its motion. Then to realize all lesser 
velocities, that of sound and rifle balls and nerve 
action, and far more valuable than all, that of news 
and thought and love, the millionfold flashings of 
life the world over, becomes an easy pleasure. 

If with finger on the pulse we flash ourselves 
through space with planetary velocity, eighteen 
miles each pulse beat, from sunrise to sunset on a 
long day, in that time we measure off in definite 
experience the vast expanse of the sun's diameter,, 
Our faculties are expanded to grasp in some meas- 
ure the vast energy contained in his huge mass, 
the force of gravity which at his surface would 
cause a man to weigh two tons, the vast reservoir 
of heat which working against gravity causes ex- 
plosions in the surface tearing out holes into which 
fifty earths could be poured like so many peas. 
The mind being expanded to some comprehension 
of this, the grasp of all lesser aggregates of force 
is easy, of sunlight on the earth, of sunlight stored 



EXPANSION. 69 

in coal, of movements in the world's history, of 
forces now poised and balanced in society, and ready 
to explode with destructive energy, or unite and 
develop with fruitful regenerative power the world 
over. 

These are examples of the direct enlargement of 
some power of the mind, as the perception of phys- 
ical magnitude, velocity and force. In like manner 
there may be magnitude expansion of the other 
faculties of the mind, of the perception and grasp 
of great spaces of time, of the imagination, mem- 
ory, the reasoning faculties, of the affections, emo- 
tions, and moral and religious powers. 

II. DIVERSITY EXPANSION. 

Beside this magnitude expansion, there is an 
enlargement of quite a different sort which may be 
called diversity expansion. This brings one to 
realize how many differences in form and color, in 
number and relative size and position and function 
of parts, a familiar object may have. The hedges 
of narrow experience are torn down, and the vast 
wealth of diversit}^ and varied complexity in things 
is revealed and grasped and made a basis both of 
growth and work. Most people are accustomed to 
and have fixed in them the idea that the supporting 
framework or skeleton of an animal is inside the 
flesh. When it is made clear that in a lobster or 
crab the arrangement is reversed, the skeleton or 
solid framework being oil the outside and the flesh 
inside, one experiences a distinct enlargement of 



70 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

the sense of diversity, there is a valuable realiza- 
tion of the richness of differences in organisms. 

The natural color of the teeth in animals we are 
acquainted with is white, but we learn that some 
animals have red^ teeth ; the birds we have seen 
have spurs on their legs, but we read that some 
birds have formidable spurs on their wings instead 
of on their legs ; the tails of birds known to us, 
have no other use than to help steer the posses- 
sor during flight, but we learn that the tail feath- 
ers of some birds of the wood-hewer family are 
curled over and made into a sort of hook by which 
the bird can suspend itself when engaged in boring 
into trees for food. We study botany and learn 
that the potato is not a root but an enlarged un- 
derground stem, that an apple is but the calyx of 
a flower enlarged, the strawberry but the enlarged 
receptacle of its blossom. These diversities being 
comprehended, it is easy to grasp others lying nearer 
perhaps to practical life, as that the essence of the 
sewing-machine, consists in the simple diversity of 
putting the eye of a needle near the point instead 
of in the head ; that a process like grinding wheat 
into flour is not necessarily a simple one, but msiy 
be a varied and complex one so that almost every 
miller has his own method and hence innumerable 
diversities in qualities of flour arise. In other 
words the mind is thus gradually made ready for 
perceiving and using valuable diversities every- 
where in life. This sense of diversity may be cul- 
tivated in a more wide and sweeping way with 



EXPANSION. 71 

correspondingly valuable results. The people of 
the earth have never seen more than one sun in the 
sky, all history tells of but one sun there, the ma- 
jority of people have never had the idea of the 
possibility of more than one sun. Moreover this 
sun is white in color and most minds have never 
thought of the possibility of its being different in 
this respect. Thus as a consequence they have 
never thought of the possibility of any other day 
and night than the simple white day and black 
night which we now have. But the astronomer 
shows us that double suns do exist elsewhere, and 
that these are often not white in color but blue or 
green or red. Hence other worlds are possible 
where there may be a red and a green sun in the 
sky at the same time. When they shine together, 
there will be white day by the combination of com- 
plementary colors. When one sun has set, the 
other will shine on, thus a succession of first, green 
day, then white day, then red day, then black night 
is possible. The conception even when worked out 
no further frees the mind from a host of the most 
fixed and positive limitations. The reception and 
origination of the new and diverse in broad and 
complicated ways is made easier. The time will 
come when the world's supply of coal will have 
been exhausted, and when mankind will be depend- 
ent on sunshine as it comes directly from the sun, 
and not on it as stored up in geologic vegetation. 
Then the regions of the earth where there is cloud- 
less sky but fertile soil and underlying seams of 



72 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

water, will become the centers of civilization. The 
Sahara may be the England of the future. Con- 
ceptions like this when fully realized give this 
sweeping diversity expansion, which makes it easy 
for the mind to swiftly grasp and adapt itself to 
any present local change in the world life. 

VALUE OF EXPANSION. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of 
this expansion element in growth. It is the first 
and essential half of growth. It is present, and a 
necessary element in the simplest act of develop- 
ment ; it is a part of the loftiest acts of genius. In 
some elementary form at least, it is a part of all liv- 
ing existence, while on the other hand the richness 
of its possibilities are never exhausted. It char- 
acterizes the growth of the child and of the man 
of genius alike. The instinct of expansion is the 
first strong one in the child, the desire and faculty 
of organization coming later. Mere magnitude 
expansion is a sufficient pleasure to the young 
mind ; to talk of a thousand houses, a million 
houses, of a million million houses or persons or 
dollars, is an unfailing delight. A girl, a waif from 
New York city when taken to the seashore for the 
first time gazed long and silently out over the 
ocean, and when questioned expressed her profound 
pleasure by saying that she had never seen '^ enough 
of anything to wiinst before." She thus also ex- 
pressed this growth trait of childhood. Not only 
is this quality thus the basal element in elementary 



EXPANSION. 7S 

growth, it is the most fundamental element in 
greatness. Emerson is fond of showing that great 
men differ from common men only in the possession 
of a larger measure of the same qualities. I^ature 
or training or both have given them a larger ex- 
pansion. Magnitude expansion fully possessed 
gives the soul a Miltonic quality, diversity expan- 
sion fully possessed gives it a Shakespearean ful- 
ness and richness. 

I. IN ASSIMILATION. 

Nor are some of the specific ways in which this 
part of growth is of value, difficult to see. When 
rightly used it is of greatest value in assimilation. 
Prof. Boyesen, a Norwegian by birth, and knowing 
almost no English came to this country as a young 
man. In a few years he made himself one of our 
most charming public lecturers, distinguished 
among forty millions of natives for his perfect 
enunciation wath scarcely a trace of foreign accent 
and for his chaste and expressive diction. He 
was trained in elocution by that master, Lewis 
Munro of Boston, who taught him not by mere 
conversational methods but by having him whisper 
across a large hall, compelling the strongest and 
most precise development of the vocalizing powers ; 
having acquired proficiency in this exercise, dis- 
tinct and accurate enunciation in conversation and 
public speaking was easy. He trained himself in 
the use of English, by reading only the classics 
in our literature. Having learned the adequate 



74 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

expression of the fullest and richest thoughts, the 
expression of all simpler ideas required little effort. 
This is the source of value in all technique train- 
ing, to give one's powers in any given line all pos- 
sible magnitude and diver sitj^ expansion, and thus 
acquire inclusively all lesser powers of the same 
sort. 

In the study of Latin, if the pupil read a little 
Caesar and then much of the more difficult Livy, 
all the rest of Caesar will be easy. If the musician 
learn to play the fugues of Bach, then vast masses 
of other organ music will not be difficult. If the 
student learn to read as soon as possible the mathe- 
matics of Laplace and Gauss, all preceding mathe- 
matics is mastered. It is possible in time to 
acquire such a general expansion and such com- 
prehensive sense of diversit}^, that it will be easy 
to grasp at once the great inclusive principles 
of a new subject as well as the peculiarities of its 
details. On taking up a new language, the mind 
is ready and expectant for a host of new idioms, 
any variety of new inflexions. On taking up a new 
science like botany, one is not surprised to find a 
stamen or a pistil with any diversity of size or 
shape, position or color. 

II. IN DISCOVERY. 

Expansion is also of fundamental value in the 
discovery of new truth. Many men could think of 
objects at the surface of the earth as falling toward 
its center, or of objects as high as the tops of the 



EXPANSION". 75 

mountains as so falling, but it was the Newton 
whose mind had magnitude exi^ansion and who 
was able to think of the moon, a quarter of a mill- 
ion of miles off, as so falling, who discovered the 
law of gravitation. The optician who first invented 
the telescope had such a narrow world, that he 
could use it only in gazing at and bringing near the 
weather vane of the village church. Galileo who 
has widely meditated for years on the universe, at 
once points the new optic glass toward the heavens 
and discovers the mountains on the moon, the 
phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter. It 
was Goethe with his poet's mind so full of the sense 
of diversity that he could see a single hairlike fiber 
of the fiower as a leaf, who discovered the funda- 
mental law of botany. It was Kepler with his 
mind teeming with all kinds of possibilities, think- 
ing of the earth as an animal and the forests as fur 
on its back, who discovered the laws of planetary 
motion. It was Pythagoras who dreamed that he 
could hear the music of the spheres, who discovered 
that the square on the hypothenuse of a right tri- 
angle equals the sum of the squares on the other 
two sides. After Herschel had discovered the 
planet Uranus, it was found that Lemonnier, in 
making his star catalogue, had previously more 
than once observed the same planet, mistaking it 
for a fixed star. On one occasion he observed it 
two nights in succession and finding that the ob- 
servation of the second night differed from that of 
the first, he rejected the first observation. If he 



76 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION, 

had had a mind open to possibilities, brimming 
and teeming with conjectures and anticipations, he 
might have recognized in the discrepancy a possi- 
ble motion and used it as a clue to a new discovery. 
A new planet might have swimmed "' into his ken " 
instead of Herschel's. It is the man who is sur- 
prised at nothing, but delighted at and able to 
grasp every new form of reality, who makes discov- 
eries and leads the human race onward. 

III. IN PRACTICAL LIFE. 

So also when we come into the realm of the 
practical application of truth, the value of this ele- 
ment of expansion is seen to be none the less. The 
successful business man has expansion of some 
sort. He is equally ready to make one thousand 
per cent, on one transaction, or to make one-eighth 
of one per cent, on ten thousand transactions. He 
has grasp of time, space, multipliers, diversities. 
He is ready to learn from any person or place. 
'No hedges shut out useful information from him. 
His market is the world. This expansion is one 
of the fundamental qualities of all great leaders 
and men of action. Caesar, Mohammed, Charle- 
magne, Gladstone, Lincoln all have had it. Every 
one who would effect something in the concrete, 
must have that diversity expansion which recog- 
nizes opportunities and means w^herever they ap- 
pear, and that magnitude expansion which will give 
every useful germ its utmost multiplier and exten* 
sion. 



EXPANSIOI^. 77 

Just as from a few chance sparks struck from 
a stone, perhaps the whole creative element of fire 
has spread through our civilization ; just as from 
a feather attracted by rubbed amber, all our civil- 
ization has been set thrilling and germinating 
anew by electricity, so each man must be pre- 
pared, if a new germ of use, or good, or truth 
appears in no matter how humble a form, to make 
out of it a new creative element in the world life. 

MEANS OF ATTAINING EXPANSION. 

We find therefore that this expansion of soul is 
of the highest value in assimilation, in discovery, 
and in practical work ; in growth and the use of 
growth alike. It is of the first importance in all 
kinds of work whether assimilative or creative. 
Such being the case, the problem set before the 
educator is, how most effectively to aid the mind in 
acquiring expansion. All knowledge contains that 
which may be made to give expansion and as 
human knowledge enlarges there is an ever in- 
creasing wealth of means to help the educator in 
this process. Every subject of study contains 
material which can be used in aiding this process 
of mind expansion. When the student takes up 
any language beside his own, he finds inflexions, 
idioms, grammatical rules radically difierent from 
those in his mother tongue and giving his mind 
a marked diversity expansion. Hence emphasis 
is laid on the fact that every person should study 
at least one language beside his own. Philology 



78 A KEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

in its widest sense has a still greater value of this 
sort. 

Mathematics dealing as it does with the very 
idea of extension and carrying out abstract quan- 
tity so often to infinity, is peculiarly fitted to 
give magnitude enlargement to the mind. The 
hosts of new facts brought to light by science give 
the mind diversity and often magnitude expansion. 
Astronomy gives fundamental magnitude expan- 
sion of all kinds of unequalled value. Botany and 
Zoology give both kinds, particularly the former. 
Archaeology and Geology, carrying the mind back, 
as they do, over vast spaces of time and dealing 
with great earth movements and forces, give mag- 
nitude expansion, and showing us altogether strange 
forms of life or still existent types in greatly dififer- 
ent forms, give diversity expansion. Psychology 
enabling us to realize all sorts and qualities of 
mind, gives one's own mind, a most valuable en- 
largement. History and Art both have an essence 
which enable them to perform the same function. 

Not only is there thus an ever increasing wealth 
of specific intellectual means by which to give this 
expansion, the general life of the world, the develop- 
ing material civilization also furnishes an increas- 
ing wealth of means to aid in this process. To 
broaden and enlarge is one of the chief educational 
functions of travel, and we have already spoken of 
the increased facilities of travel and means of sup* 
plementing it. Less than one hundred years ago 
Sir Walter Scott complained that it cost him fifty 



EXPANSION. 79 

pounds to make a trip from Edinburgh to London ; 
to-day the same trip can be made for less than 
three pounds. Photographs, various processes of 
engraving, illustrated magazines have been multi- 
plied till by them every one can be carried vividly 
out over all the world. Inventions, all the diver- 
sified material development in the midst of which 
we are, all have a great enlarging effect. 

DIFFICULTIES AND LIMITATIONS. 

But with all this ever increasing wealth of both 
intellectual and material means of giving expan- 
sion, the process has by no means been made easy. 
Comprehensive and symmetrical soul expansion 
still remains difficult. To rightly a.id it, is one of 
the most perplexing problems which the teacher 
has set before him. How hard it is to really com- 
municate a full and permanent expansion is shown 
by the fewness of those that acquire it. When it 
is given by purely intellectual means, it is a ques- 
tion whether it can easily become complete or 
fruitful in the highest way. Some one concrete or 
semi-concrete element too often expands and satis- 
fies the soul to the exclusion of other elements. 
So-called practical ideas expand to the exclusion 
of ideals, though indeed the latter are often far 
more broadly and fundamentally practical when 
understood aright. If memory or imagination or 
reason expand till the one enlarged element seems 
to make a complete existence. Men think they 
are enlarging life when really they are only deep- 



80 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

ening and lengthening the rut in which they are, 
thus making it harder to get out of. Like the fish 
they learn to live in the water so well that they 
never learn to live in the air. Like the ostrich, 
they learn to run so well, that they never learn to 
fly. 

It is also a question whether the modern mate- 
rial methods of expansion do not shut in the soul 
in some ways, as eflfectively as they expand it in 
others. In many young lives one is reminded of 
celery plants whose roots, before they have been 
set out, have been dipped in clayey mud instead of 
wet loam, as gardeners sometimes make the mistake 
of doing. The plants are strong and thrifty, the 
soil is rich, the weather favorable, but the plants do 
not grow; as fast as new leaves form, old leaves 
fall oflT in yellow blight. On investigation the 
gardener finds about each root a lump of hardened 
clay forbidding growth. So does the materialism 
of this age harden about the roots of many lives 
and prevent vigorous, expanding growth. 

If expansion take place at all there is every- 
where this general diflSculty, that it is likely to be- 
come tyranny of some sort, to be an over extension 
of the individual ; the one person or a trait of him 
spreads out over the world in some self-aggrandiz- 
ing way. This« is particularly true if expansion 
take place in a concrete or semi-concrete form. It 
makes Napoleons or Jay Goulds of some kind, who 
devastate and absorb smaller lives instead of en- 
larging them. If such expanding existences meet 



EXPANSION. 81 

eaeli other, they clash and are hardened back, in 
stead of helping each other and all other individ- 
uals to expand further, to complete each other 
through and through all things. 

Such then is this expansion element in growth, 
and such the secular means of aiding it, and such 
the accompanying difficulties, 

EXPANDING POWER IN MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 

Let US now consider the relation of moral and 
religious development to this part of growth. The 
ideas of religion rightly and fully used are capable 
of giving a vaster and better expansion than any 
others. Full religious development requires a 
grasp of space and time and energy and conscious- 
ness and love and various combinations of these, 
such as is required no where else. A grasp of time 
for instance is required which carries the mind 
back to early Hebrew times, earlier still to the first 
civilizations in Egypt and Assyria, nay to the be- 
ginning itself. Some effort is required fully and 
definitely to grasp a space of even a few weeks, it 
takes much expansion to be able to grasp a life- 
time, but he who would take in the full scope of 
religious truth is compelled to try to grasp a past 
which includes all other spaces of time as mere 
points. In like manner the idea of immortality 
carries him forward to approximate a grasp of an 
unlimited future. So also does the fullest religious 
development require the utmost grasp of space and 

6 



82 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATIOK. 

power, so that all our starry spaces shall be a mere 
speck, all the sun's energy a mere spark. 

The effort to get an ever fuller conception of God 
has a profound growth-causing effect, and produces 
manifold expansion throughout the soul. It is of 
great value to try to enlarge our minds to some 
realization of the consciousness of a great man. 
Merely to catch up some little details of his char- 
acter, to combine these, to try to realize them all 
together as some little portion of a great conscious- 
ness gives both a diversity and magnitude expan- 
sion to the soul. To stretch one's thoughts out 
beyond some one quality of a mind like Shaks- 
peare's is an education, while to realize fully the 
breadth and fulness of that mind is to become great 
oneself What then shall we say of the value of 
an effort made in all devoutness to enlarge one's 
soul to a realization even of some little details of 
God's nature, some aspect of his greatness and ful- 
ness? If the other can produce growth, beget 
greatness of soul, what growth and greatness does 
this produce ? 

Of profoundest growth-causing power of all is to 
try to comprehend in some way Christ's spirit of 
love, that is the love of God as revealed in him. 
To try to realize for some moment the spirit of self- 
sacrifice which filled men like Arnold Winkelreid or 
John Maynard or Leonidas in some hour of supreme 
exaltation of self-sacrifice, requires an effort of ex- 
pansion. From a phrase uttered by them, or a 
portrait out of which the soul speaks, or a vivid 



EXPANSION* 83 

account of their deeds, to make one's self feel even 
for an instant as they felt, to realize their breadth 
and intensity of self-forgetfalness in the desire to 
help others, gives a truly vital expansion of the 
soul. Further, to realize the souls of men who, 
like Hampden and Lincoln, have loved a nation or a 
race, begets a still greater expansion, a largeness 
of sympathy which includes many other kinds of 
growth. What shall we say then of a realization, 
however dim and partial, of that spirit of love 
which was in Christ not for a moment or an hour 
but constantly, not inspiring and governing any 
one act merely, but the whole scope and all the 
details of his life, not applying to a race or a gen- 
eration, but to all mankind, and extending to the 
extremest humiliation of life and pain of death? 
It begets a fundamental and comprehensive enlarge- 
ment of soul that makes time short, the world 
small, all work easy, great in itself and begetting 
all other kinds of expansion. 

Not only do religious ideas thus give the broad- 
est possible expansion, they also give, when rightly 
used, a harmonious and complete enlargement. 
The religious co-ordinates and stimulates all other 
expansions within one. It does not exclude, or 
stunt, or harden back the development of the ideal 
element, or the practical, or the intellectual, or the 
emotional, rather it helps develop these and urges 
on their development in every possible way as an 
aid to itself. If mathematical ideas of space or the 
facts of astronomy have any power to give us a 



84 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION, 

wider grasp of space or power, then religious 
growth suggests and demands their utmost develop- 
ment in order that by measuring space the extent 
of God's presence can be the better realized, by 
measuring time, the duration of his goodness be the 
more fully apprehended, and in all ways the re- 
sources of his power be the more adequately real- 
ized. If the facts of science have any power to 
help us conceive the fulness of diversity in God's 
methods and nature, then religious growth demands 
their utmost investigation and discovery. If lan- 
guage has any new power to express sympathy and 
love, religion demands its utmost 'development. If 
photographic art, electricity, and steam have any 
power to make the brotherhood of man a more prac- 
tical fact, then is their extremest use demanded by 
every form of reverence and dev outness. Thus all 
forms of expansion are made parts of one great en- 
largement, and are but filling in of details of that 
process. 

If religious expansion be thms made fundamental 
and controlling, perhaps the most important result 
of all will be that each expanding individuality 
will not be self-aggrandizing, will not devastate and 
absorb, or harden back other expanding souls ; it 
will rather stimulate and aid all other souls to en- 
largement, and be aided by them, so that all will be 
expanded by reciprocal help, through and through 
all. There will thus be an external symmetry of 
expansion, as well as an internal one. There will 



EXPANSIOK. 85 

be generated among men a general spirit of expan- 
sion carrying all forward to a fuller life. 

The power thus inherent in religion to aid all 
other forms of expansion and itself to be further 
completed by them, may not have been fully real- 
ized or used in the past. But this inherent power 
nevertheless exists, and with each new need and 
with each new realization of the added fulness of 
life to be attained by a free and vigorous use of it, 
it will be made more and more available. Rising 
through the past we find indications of what this 
power will achieve when fully employed. The mag- 
nificent record of the Hebrew race in all lines of 
great performance is an illustration of it. The re- 
ligious races in general are the expanding and 
achieving ones. Every race with a true and intense 
ethical or religious spirit has been expansive in 
some way, the Roman and English in government ; 
the Greek and German in philosophy ; the Hebrew 
and English in poetry and colonization and mission- 
ary enterprise. The enormous power in religious 
expansion is shown in such experiences as conver- 
sion, when the whole being seems suddenly to en- 
large out over time and space, to expand in love 
and faith and many forms of vast inclusive growth, 
accomplishing in an instant the result of years of 
ordinary growth. The power of a fundamentally 
religious expansion to keep the enlarging soul in 
harmony with all others, to make it incalculably 
helpful in stimulating them, whether they will or 
no, and thus perhaps in time to govern all the ex- 



86 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

panding elements of civilization into harmony and 
the highest fruitfulness is shown most impressively 
in the cases of such men as Paul and Luther. Such 
men and such instances are but a prophecy of what 
can be done in the future. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OEGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 

SECOND PART OF GROWTH. 

IN the last chapter, the first and everywhere es- 
sential element of growth expansion, was con- 
sidered. The second half of growth, is organization, 
or, as it may sometimes appear, re-organization. 
Mere amorphous enlargement is not enough. It 
breaks down in time and ceases to be of further use 
even if it be further possible. The atlantosaurs 
of geologic times, eighty feet long though they 
were, passed away because they had not a high 
enough organization. A newspaper in the city of 
Philadelphia, managed by somewhat loose business 
methods, had apparently reached its limit of 
growth. An organizing man, one who could determ- 
ine the daily cost of each item of production and 
suggest plans accordingly, was put into the office. . 
The rest of the force remained practically the same, 
but in the next four years the paper was able to 
grow fourfold. Growth is not merely the expan- 
sion of a gas, it is the expansion of the tree, and 
that perhaps of the fruit tree, where every few 
years a new and more highly organized variety re- 
places the old. The really growing mind is not 
merely able to grasp any magnitude or velocity, 

(87) 



88 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

and expectant of any diversity. It also tests and 
sifts out the unreal. It is not merely expectant of 
any emergency, or good fortune, or disaster ; it is 
also able to test all appearances, to search out the 
real and measure and use them, till it is organized 
into fitness to meet and utilize all opportunities. 
Mere extended and unorganized memory makes the 
encyclopedia ; mere extended imagination makes 
the dreamer ; mere action makes the disturber. 
The diversity expansion which enables a mind to 
imagine the centaur is of some value; but that 
which enables a mind to conceive of the locomotive 
is worth more. The mental power which enables 
one to think of the vast multitude of stars as 
sparks flying from some anvil, or to take a flight 
through them from system to system, like that 
made in the famous dream of Jean Paul Richter, 
is worth something, but of itself it makes the mere 
visionary. The man that really grows, forms many 
such conceptions, tests and retests them all till he 
finds one like that of the great nebula once filling 
space and breaking up to form suns and systems, 
and thus brings his expansion into definite accord 
with reality. To be able to think as Macaulay did 
of the day when the Fiji Islander should sit on the 
broken arches of London Bridge and muse over the 
ruins of what is now the metropolis of the world, is 
worth something. But it is worth more to think 
of the day when the factories of Birmingham and 
Sheffield will be transferred to the Sahara ; for 
when the earth's supply of coal is exhausted, this 



ORGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 89 

or something like it will come to pass. Columbus 
had expansion but he had something more. Many 
dreamers before him had thought of flying through 
space and about the earth on Pegasus-like animals 
or magic carpets, conceptions requiring quite as 
much enlargement of mind as Columbus had, but 
it was Columbus, whose expansions were organ- 
ized, who had dreamed and tested, whose idealisms 
were tempered by a thorough knowledge of navi- 
gation and mathematics, who saw not only th^ 
wealth of India in his visions but also the birds 
and sea weed that actually passed in air and wave 
by his ship, it was this Columbus who grew and 
made the world grow. 

Newton had extraordinarily enlarged powers of 
mind, the solar system way a toy in his thoughts. 
But he had something beside expansion, he had 
an equally extraordinary perfection of organization 
of faculties. He could take his great idea of gravi- 
tation and sit down by a pendulum to test and re- 
test it. He could wait for twenty years till new 
measurements of the earth and new mathematical 
processes gave him tests warranting certainty.. 

In Lincoln and Gladstone we see men with broadly 
expanded souls, capable of love for whole races and 
nations, but in them we find something beside the 
vague largeness of the dreamer. We clearly dis- 
cern in all these men souls intensely organized to 
meet any emergency or opportunity ; powers, sim- 
ple, but also subtle, complex and coherent. 



90 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

ORGANIZATION AS A PROCESS. 

It is often most instructive to watch a process 
of growth and observe its stages, first the crude, 
large outreachings of the nature, then the gradual 
organization and co-ordination of these into superior 
effectiveness. These stages can be distinctly traced 
in the development of the disciples of Christ. In 
the early part of his ministry, the disciples appear 
in the main in a more or less passive and receptive 
attitude, but about the middle of his ministry, 
there was a marked awakening among them. 
Their natures began to reach out and act, showing 
great earnestness, love, ambition, often meeting 
with great success and often with failure. They 
could not heal the demoniac son, but when sent on 
their mission, devils were subject unto them. 
James and John when they ask '' Wilt thou that 
we command fire to come down from heaven and 
consume them," show great earnestness and faith, 
but these in a very crude form. The expanding 
personalities of the disciples began to clash, they 
contended as to who should be first. But as time 
went by, discrimination and organization came to 
them and they became the harmonious and effective 
body of disciples which spread Christianity over 
the world. 

When Christianity and Roman culture were in- 
troduced among the Germanic hordes, they pro- 
duced at first a like crude development of the na- 
tures of these peoples, marked by acts of sublimest 
self-sacrifice, displays of immense energy, which 



OEGANIZATIOK AND EXACTNESS. 91 

often came however to clash in huge, irregular 
fashion. But all those irregular developments in 
Northern Europe have since organized and inter- 
organized till those lands have become the most 
highly civilized part of the world. Every new 
wave of culture that spreads over America as the 
art movement after the Centennial Exhibition of 
1876, extends itself at first as a homogeneous flood, 
but afterward breaks up and becomes organized 
in each section of the country to suit the peculiar 
needs and develop the highest fruitfulness in that 
area. 

As with all other growth, so it is with growth in 
the young mind. Here also come first those ex- 
pansions which are manifested as the romantic 
hopes, the boundless faith, the vivid dreams, the 
various impulsive enlargements of youth. Later 
this expansion becomes definite, each extended fac- 
ulty learns discrimination, comes to act slowly or 
rapidly, is filled with organs and channels, is made 
into elements and tissues, which are grouped and 
regrouped into effective arrays among themselves. 
Thus each expansion is organized, and all different 
ones are united into a coherent whole and made 
fruitful together. 

ACCURACY THE BASIS OF ORGANIZATION. 

The second half of growth then is re-organiza- 
tion. In the accomplishment of this second half, 
many factors enter, but the most fundamental is 
the spirit of truth. With persistent loyalty to 



92 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

truth, organization adapted to all needs and ca- 
pable of the highest productiveness will come. 
True growth is expansion in accord with reality. 

If we examine any of the highly organized 
growth products of the world life, we find that ac- 
curacy, precision of all orders, is fundamental. 
Compare the German army of the present with 
ancient hordes that once warred in the same land. 
An accurate measure of Germany's position and 
relations in modern Europe, an accurate training 
of each man and body of men, accurate weapons, 
careful measurements of forces, roads, foods, all this 
aggregate of accuracies large and small, is the basis 
of this great organization. Consider also Greek 
art and philosophy. Careful measurements have 
shown that many lines of the Parthenon, which 
were once supposed to be straight, are slightly 
curved according to carefully studied rules ; out 
of these minute accuracies arise the lightness and 
grace of that wonderful structare. Compare the 
Greek language with the inarticulate cries of the 
savage ; the subtle jDerception and organization of 
differences of sound and symbol are the sources of 
the advance. Accurate distinctions extended and 
developed make Greek philosophy. If we take 
something so different from these as the triumphs 
of French cuisine, and ask the basis of its per- 
fection, we find it to be the French chef with his 
pair of delicate scales, accurately weighing each 
ingredient, leaving nothing to guess. What again 
is the basis of our vast, complex modern com- 



ORGAi^IZATION AND EXACTNESS. 93 

merce ? It is that large accuracy which grasps the 
markets and resources of the world in true perspec- 
tive, as well as that minute accuracy which meas- 
ures an inch to within one five-millionth part of 
itself, and can thus make all the parts of a watch 
interchangeable with those of other watches ; it is 
the steamer which crosses the Atlantic, trip after 
trip, within a few hours of its predicted time, run- 
ning within a track a mile wide if need be ; it is 
the chronometer by which this steamer runs and 
which though tossed about in an iron ship by a 
stormy ocean, can measure a week to within five 
or six seconds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Let the student then observe this objective value 
of accuracy in the world about him, and in all his 
work and study. Let him notice that much of the 
delicacy and beauty of illustrations in American 
magazines is due to the care with which the engrav- 
ings are " made ready," successive pieces of tissue 
paper being pasted on the back of the block of 
wood on which the cut is, and rubbed off and added 
to, till the pressure of the printing press will 
exactly bring out each detail of the engraving in 
the right shade. Let him notice that a large busi- 
ness like Wanamaker's is possible only because it 
is managed with such precision, that a month if 
necessary will be devoted in tracing to its source a 
discrepancy of one cent. If he read history, let 
him observe the accuracy of great commanders 



94 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

like Napoleon and Frederick the Great, along with 
their breadth of view, and by contrast, the inaccu- 
racy of inefficient generals. At the battle of 
Chancellorsville, Gen. Hooker is said to have 
dashed off an order, omitting all punctuation 
marks. Each of the three corps commanders to 
whom it was sent, interpreted it differently. The 
confusion which resulted was in a large measure 
the cause of the loss of the battle. If the student 
read law, let him notice that the omission of a 
single letter may invalidate a legal document. A 
valuable claim, involving thousands of pounds 
sterling, was lost because of the use in a legal 
paper of the term " Sheriff of London," instead of 
''Sheriffs of London." If he study mathematics, 
let him observe the destructive effect of a single 
mistake in multiplication. If he study language, 
let him notice the misconceptions that can result 
from one omitted ending. Let the value of ac- 
curacy be so impressed on him that he shall strive 
earnestly for it and prize as valuable possessions 
all new finenesses of reality. If the spirit of 
verity become thus organic in him, it will have a 
profound re-organizing power over him. It will 
modify the very structure of his mind, it will or- 
ganize anew its functions. 

FRUITS OF ACCURACY. 

It will aid his memory by fixing sharply resem- 
blances and differences. It will develop the acute- 
ness of his perceptions. Sir John Herschel tells 



ORGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS*. 95 

of a man whom he knew and who was blind in one 
eye, yet had reached middle life without discover- 
ing the fact. This could never have happened to 
a man of conscientious accuracy like Sir John 
Herschel himself. It develops and strengthens 
the reasoning faculties, and also co-ordinates them. 
The effort to be accurate gives not merel}^ greater 
power over superficial details but also profoundly 
develops the rational structure of the mind. To 
be sound in the main principle and at the same 
time accurate in details and expression requires a 
double and a newly organized brain, and the effort 
to attain this ideal, if persevered in, almost invar- 
iably bestows this reward of increased and more 
highly organized mental power. The effort to be 
accurate often compels the mind to search down 
into underlying principles. In order to be accurate 
in details, the student frequently finds that he must 
first be correct in the main principle, hence the 
mind is required to develop its searching powers. 
It therefore becomes a frequent and familiar ex- 
perience with a teacher on picking up a student's 
paper and noticing it to be absolutely without 
punctuation marks, homogeneously unpunctuated 
and unparagraphed, and very heterogeneously cap- 
italized, to feel, sure at once that there will be mis- 
takes in main principles, a partial and one-sided 
grasp of things everywhere apparent and showing 
imperfectly organized faculties. If writing of the 
planet Venus the student spell it '' Venice," he is 
not likely to be able to explain why Venus is 



96 ' A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

sometimes the morning, sometimes the evening 
star. On the other hand it is a constant pleasure 
to the teacher to watch the growth in grasp and 
reasoning and searching power of the student who 
has a scrupulous intellectual conscience, and is not 
satisfied till everything is as correct as may be. 

The effort after exactness also brings other ele- 
ments of re-organization, as versatility and quick- 
ness. If one is in a position where he must speak 
and act at once, and he desires at the same time to 
be correct in all respects, his mind must act with 
at least double quickness in order to do the double 
or more amount of work required, in the same 
time. He must swiftly perceive not only the gen- 
eral fact but also its details and aspects, and at 
once choose an act or a word which will fit right 
down on the complex whole. Again, conscientious 
accuracy will sometimes after long practice result 
in an almost poetical delicacy of language or con- 
duct. This is frequently noticeable late in life in 
otherwise uncultured men. Their consciences may 
be said to have educated them into partial poets. 
In a word, the desire to be true in detail, often com- 
pels the man to be true in principle, and to be true 
in detail and principle both, means re-organizing 
growth throughout the whole nature. 

COMBINATION OF EXPANSION AND ACCURACY. 

When expansion and accurac}'' have become es- 
tablished in the being as dynamic habits, they come 
to react on each other in such ways as to produce 



ORGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 97 

complete growth. Expansion cannot go on bej^ond 
a certain point without compelling accurate organ-- 
ization. On the other hand in order to be accurate, 
to get a correct explanation and use of details, we 
are compelled, as we have already tried to show, 
to search and discover new laws and more funda- 
mental principles ; thus expansion downward into 
the more abstract and fundamental is made neces- 
sary. If Lemonnier had had large expansion, it 
would have compelled accuracy in his observations 
of Uranus ; if he had had an intense spirit of accur- 
acy, it would have compelled expansion in the form 
of new discovery. Again, when accuracy would 
halt and become a mere pedantry of details, ex- 
pansion lifts it up and makes it an accuracy of 
scope, of exact and broad perspective ; it keeps 
the multipliers and propagation of every seeming 
trifle in view, and thus helps complete accuracy 
into -thorough organization. Thus progressively 
and reciprocally developing each other, these two 
factors produce the other elements and character- 
istics which go to make up complete growth. 

I. INDIVIDUALITY. 

One of these characteristics is thoroughly-formed 
individuality. This is also, as we have said, one 
of the most difficult to create. Increasing com- 
plaint is made of the uniformity, identity even, 
that is creeping over the world. A province or a 
state is but its capital city spread out ; France is 
but diluted Paris. Telegraphs, railroads and the 



98 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

press are making all men more and more alike, and 
this too in an age when a more highly developed 
specialism is called for and is most profitable. But 
if the correct principles of growth are followed, 
the highest individuality will result. Let the pe- 
culiar powers of each personality be expanded to 
the utmost, let them be accurately wrought out to 
suit each other and all other realities, and an in- 
tense as well as most fruitful individuality will be 
developed.' A notable instance is the chemist 
Scheele, the centennial anniversary of whose birth 
the scientific world recently celebrated. He had so 
little taste for language that though born in Swed- 
ish Pomerania and removing in early life to Sweden 
itself, he never learned to speak the Swedish language 
and barely knew enough of it to write his memoirs. 
Yet his highly developed powers of chemical in- 
vestigation enabled him to make some fundamental 
discoveries in that science and lift him up a 'strik- 
ing individuality in the pages of its history. The 
force of Sydney Smith's remark increases with 
every addition to the complexity of modern life. 
'' Be what nature intended you to be and you will 
succeed. Be anything else and you will be ten 
thousand times worse than nothing." At a recent 
college commencement a returned graduate '' who 
had for some years been struggling with the law 
and who had learned some hard facts," by experi- 
ence and observation, suggested that a professor be 
added to the college faculty whose main business 
should be to associate as closely as possible with 



OEGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 99 

the students, ^' become as intimately acquainted as 
possible with them and what latent talent " was in 
each individual ? " and help guide them into that 
life calling into which nature intended them to go." 
The man who thoroughly possesses both accuracy 
in all its forms and expansion will grow out into 
that line of usefulness where "■ nature intended him 
to go." Accurate, expansive growth will give a 
powerful aggressive individuality. 

II. INCLUSIVENESS. 

Another characteristic of the highest growth is 
essential comprehensiveness or inclusiveness. It 
was recently said by a leading writer, that the great 
problem of modern life is elimination. Rather it 
is inclusiveness. The problem is to observe what 
few facts, experiences, acts include the many, and 
by acquiring and living the few to live a compre- 
hensive life. Plato said he would follow about like 
a god the man who could show him unity, in di- 
versity. Expansiveness, completeness in all essen- 
tials, by living in the least concrete, this is the 
problem. Expansion and accuracy together solve 
it. They enable one to see many things, then the 
few inclusive ones, often the few which make the 
many into a single system. People are beginning 
to realize that the two halves of the famous dictum 
of Lord Brougham, that ever}^ person should try 
" to know something about everything and every- 
thing about something," are necessary to each 
other. The onl}^ way to know something about 



100 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

everything, is by knowing everything about some- 
thing, and vice versa. Individuality and compre- 
hensiveness are thus brought together in the high- 
est growth ; specialism and essential completeness 
are obtained by the union of expansion and accu- 
racy. 

HI. PRODUCTIVENESS. 

One of the most valuable as well as most difficult 
to acquire of the qualities of the highest growth is 
the power of original production. A teacher has 
frequent occasion to notice the extreme rarity of 
independent producing power, of any strong ten- 
dency to mental fertility or productiveness even in 
minds gifted with considerable analytic power. 
Ruskin has said that not one person in a hundred 
thousand ever sees anything, and not one in a mill- 
ion ever has an idea. These, of course, are the 
words of a bitter moment, but there is a basis of 
truth to the statement. Every day a teacher no- 
tices that there are three classes of students : first, 
the many who can walk in a beaten track ; second, 
the some, who when shown a distant goal display 
skill and often originality in attaining it, who can 
work a mine when it is shown them ; third , the very 
few, who can for themselves discover new wealth 
and work it out. The lack of fecundity is certainly 
the most widespread of all mental defects. Have 
the correct growth processes, have expansion and 
accuracy any power to remedy this ? Rightly used, 
it is plain that they have. Every mind is to a cer- 



OBGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 101 

tain degree productive, and yet not one student in 
twenty, perhaps not one in fifty, has any syste- 
matic method of preserving and accumulating the 
products, whatever they be, of his mental activity. 
The old fashion of keeping diaries used to do this 
in a rough way, but that has passed away and has 
been replaced by no other general method. Yet 
what more important factor can there be in stimu- 
lating independent growth, than to make it a rule to 
observe any little germ of new truth that may ap- 
pear in the flow of one's daily thought, to separate 
it from the surrounding worthless, that would 
smother it or hurry it away beyond recall, and to re- 
cord it in a way best fitted for its after develop- 
ment ? This is a use of expansion because it both 
leaves the mind free to go on and gives it an im- 
pulse to do so ; it is an employment of accuracy by 
compelling the mind to put a vague idea into words, 
to give an indefinite fancy a local habitation and a 
name. It cannot be too often repeated that '' writ- 
ing maketh an exact man," but the right kind of 
writing also makes a broad man. Most beginners 
have little power to even recognize these vital 
germs when they appear in their own minds, and 
are surprised when it is pointed out that the}^ have 
an idea. Often they record as useful ideas what 
they see a little later are of no value. But practice 
teaches increasing discrimination till, at last, the 
mind becomes thrillingly sensitive to the presence 
of each new idea, and it becomes an easy pleasure 
to at least gather day by day the seed from any lit- 



102 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

tie flower or fruit that presents itself within one, 
to plant these and gather the results again. It is 
not surprising to find that most men who have at- 
tained a high degree of productiveness have kept a 
note-book, adapted to their needs and methods of 
work. To show how widely this is true it is but 
necessary to mention as examples such a variety of 
illustrious names as Hawthorne, Emerson, Macau- 
lay, Locke, Newton, Clerk Maxwell. One of the 
most noteworthy instances is that of Motley, the 
historian. When a student at Harvard he neg- 
lected the curriculum work and was rusticated once 
or twice for this negligence, but his college course 
had one redeeming feature. In his desk he had 
a drawer, into which he threw records of ideas, 
snatches of poetry, and literary projects. His 
mind seemed to be ever fecundating some new lit- 
erary enterprise, and the results he preserved, so 
that that drawer became the center of his educa- 
tional life. It might have been worth a great deal 
more to him if, at the same time, he had done sys- 
tematic college work. At all events its redeeming 
power in his intellectual life, the initial habit of 
expansion, the initial habit of exactness it pro- 
duced, are worthy of careful attention. 

Thus expansion and accuracy taken together 
and fully employed form a summation of growth. 
They correspond to the two great elements or 
chief divisions of the new education. Expansion 
is the preliminary or desultory course, accuracy is 
the second or thorough deductive course. They 



OEGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 103 

are love and truth, the great outgoing force and 
the correcting, establishing force. The one gives 
largeness of scope, the other, fineness of detail. 
They give the highest fruitfulness and endurance 
to life. 

MEANS OF ATTAINING TRUTH-ORGANIZATION. 

How then is this second element of growth to be 
attained ? Some methods have already been hinted 
at or described. Every branch of study, mathe- 
matics, language, science ; the practical world, art, 
and literature, all indeed are full of means by which 
to cultivate this in the student. The appliances 
for attaining it are increasing everywhere. The 
world is not only demanding more and more ac- 
curate work in all lines of effort, it is also pro- 
ducing the means by which workers can attain this 
accuracy. Better microscopes and telescopes, all 
the improved methods and machinery with which 
each decade replaces those of the preceding, have re- 
duced the exact determination of facts to a science. 
Century Dictionaries and Encj^clopedia Brittannicas 
have reduced the swift verification of facts to a 
simple act. The amount of testing and exact 
measurement and recording that is being done is 
enormous. Increasing accuracy, searching concrete 
truthfulness is one of the most prominent character- 
istics of the age. 

But the defect in the accuracy obtained by the 
means mainty in use in this age, is that it is too apt 
to become mere accuracy in details, and to make 



104 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

mere precislonists who mistake their collection of 
needle points for the universe in orderly array. 
Accuracy loses more than half its value unless it 
be combined with an active expansive element, and 
thus become that accuracy on a large scale which 
gives a thorough appreciation of scope, perspec- 
tive, general elements as well as details. Mere 
concrete preciseness of itself, too often, instead of 
uniting creatively with expansion, becomes final 
and self-satisfied. The minor and more palpable 
accuracies are likely to become primary in the at- 
tention and to drive out the major ones. Every 
agency that will remedy this is of the utmost 
val-ue. 

eONSOEENCE ANB RELIGION AS ORGANIZERS. 

If now we turn to the moral and religious ele- 
ment as a part of education, we find that rightly 
developed in the soul, it gives a deeper, intenser 
and more comprehensive spirit of accuracy than any- 
thing else. The spirit of accuracy is in its inmost 
nature the spirit of truthfulness ; it is conscientious- 
ness. In the very essence of religion lies a spirit 
of intense reverence for truth. A truly religious 
mind realizes that there is a moral worth in every 
fact, that every exact fact is a summation of all 
truth. It is men with this great reverence for 
truth that have been the organizers in the world's 
history, and have themselves become supremely 
organized. When falseness to any fact, careless- 
ness even to any shade of reality, is realized as 



OEGANIZATION AND EXACTNESS. 105 

impairing one's truth fiber, and therefore the in- 
tegrity of the soul, and hence even the moral con- 
stitution of the universe, and when a distinct rev- 
erence for truth is thus established, the organiza- 
tion of the individual and his organizing power are 
assured. It will be much easier, nay in many cases 
he will feel it to be necessary to do all work, care- 
fully and conscientiously, and the organizing re- 
sults will appear. Lincoln never had any real 
school m*aster beside his own love of truth, but this 
taught him how to write his Gettsyburg speech 
and his second inaugural. Conscience is the great- 
est of all organizers. 

This religious love of truth not only gives ac- 
curacy in the swiftest and most fundamental way^ 
it also gives the broadest and most elevating ac- 
curacy. It lifts exactness above the mere precise- 
ness of the pedant ; it gives an order, a range, a 
perspective to this power. It shows that each cor- 
rect detail is not only valuable in itself in the im- 
mediate area of its concrete application, but that it 
also has an immensely greater moral multiplier in 
its effect on the soul and the world life in general. 
It shows that beside accuracy in detail there are 
forms of mass accuracy like the true apprehension 
of the needs and resources of the world. It thus 
comes to have an expansive effect over this part of 
growth. All facts are humanized and spiritualized. 
The truth-organization given by the religious spirit, 
thus spreads throughout the being with general 
power. 

The religious spirit aids the truth-organization of 



106 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

tlie being in another way, by urging it in all parts 
of the nature in order that the religious sjjirit itself 
may be made more effective. The altruistic spirit, 
the religious spirit cannot go far without perceiving 
that its own usefulness is vastly increased by the 
accuracy of its knowledge and action. The spirit 
of love cannot attain its maximum efficiency with- 
out wisdom of mind. Mere love of her child will 
not enable the mother to prescribe aright for its 
diseases. The undisciplined generosity of Timon of 
Athens did more harm than good. Many an altru- 
ism has been disappointed and shocked back into 
selfishness because it went to work in vague, uncal- 
culating fashion. Love, however, in many cases 
finding its work unfruitful or inadequately produc- 
tive, proceeds to learn, to test, to measure and thus 
to make itself fruitful to the highest possible de- 
gree. The mother that loves her child often studies 
all of medicine that pertains to the affliction of the 
child, that she may the better watch the fluctua- 
tions of disease and alleviate pain. More than one 
father, loving his son, has learned mathematics and 
Latin that he might prepare that son for college. 

Everywhere the best conscience and the best love 
thus search out and master truth, and thus them- 
selves become supreme organizing agents. Men 
may have been accurate and discijDlined without the 
aid of them. But their accuracy and organization 
would have been gained more easily, and would have 
been of a higher order, if attained by their use. 
That system of education is imperfect which does 
not avail itself of them. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE WILL. 
THIRD ELEMENT IN GROWTH. 

THE great Italian astronomer, Schiaparelli, who 
discovered the canals on the planet Mars and 
many other interesting details of its surface never 
before seen, says of himself, " it was only after four- 
teen years of work in observing Mars that I saw the 
details of the image with any clearness, and after 
that further details appeared." This illustrates a 
third element in growth, namely, the use of the will. 
Schiaparelli had that expansion of mind which 
made him read}^ to perceive anything new in his 
observations, he had that spirit of ac'curac}^ which 
enabled him to test all glimpses and suggestions, 
reject all illusions, and establish the fruits of his 
work on a scientific basis for the world and as 
organic powers in himself, but be^^ond these he had 
the will which drove him on through fourteen fruit- 
less years to perfect the growth within him and 
make it productive to the world. Growth as a 
process is made up of expansion and organization, 
but it needs a generating, sustaining force to carry 
it on. The will is this vital, energizing power. 

I. THE WILL A FACTOR IN EXPANSION. 

Expansion is, in itself, usually pleasant. It brings 

(107) 



108 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

its own impetus of exhilaration, yet even in expan- 
sion the mind often comes to places where the use 
of the will is necessary to further progress, where 
there must be for long periods of time intense and 
repeated efforts, till openings for exact and desired 
expansions appear. The seed corn has been planted. 
A dash of rain comes, and then a hot sun, and as a 
result the surface of the clayey soil is baked into a 
hard crust. The seed corn sprouts but the tender 
shoot cannot force its w^ay up through the crust 
above. Then comes the era of effort. The tender 
growth pushes its way along under the crust for a 
distance of more than a foot often, till it comes to 
some crack or yielding spot. Through this it 
arises, pale as if with long effort and completes its 
life. In the same way come eras in human life 
when expansion is bought only with supreme 
effort. Edison tells ns that, in inventing his elec- 
tric light he formed no less than three t^ousand^ 
distinct theories and plans, all of which seemed 
perfectly plausible before they were tried, yet only 
two of which succeeded. Having obtained the right 
plan, it was easy for him to expand it over the 
world. Many a mind struggles by sheer force of 
will for long years to get a satisfactory faith by 
which to live, or line of growth which to fill in in 
after life. Often also when a season of expansion 
comes it is only by an effort of the will that it is 
carried to its full develox)ment. When the mind 
becomes satiated, frequentlj^ the will alone can carry 
the soul on to the utmost use of the period of inspire 



THE WILL. 109 

ation. Again a supreme use of will power is many 
times needed in that kind of growth expansion, 
which is more or less external to us ; when having 
made ourselves equal to the best we know, we try 
to cause the world about us to grow to the same 
point. We strive to extend our growth out through 
the world about us and make it homogeneous in 
some respect with us. In this process our growth 
often clashes with other growths, or blindnesses, or 
opposing wills, and all our self-assertive power is 
necessary to make our self-extension power effec- 
tive. Thus expansion, pleasant as it usually is, has 
in many places vital need of a robust will to aid it. 

II. FACTOR IN ORGANIZATION. 

The will has a more important function still in 
that second part of growth which we have called 
organization. Self discipline except to the very 
few is unpleasant and the will must be an omni- 
present factor in it. To test and re-test ; to devise 
and apply varied new tests ; to teach all the powers 
to converge and exactly meet any need or oppor- 
tunity that arises ; to teach them so often and so 
well that in time they learn to do so instinctively, 
this is a spontaneous and exhilarating process 
to but few. When Newton sat by a pendulum day 
after day, and placed various substances as mercury, 
wood, iron, in turn in its hollow bob and set it in 
motion and patiently noted the results and thus 
determined the precise nature of the law of gravi- 
tation, his mind must have been in a very different 



110 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

frame from what it was in when vastly dreaming 
about universal forces. A French scientist took 
the pieces of a single fossil, more than two hun- 
dred and fifty in number and spent three years in 
chipping oat each piece free from the solid encom- 
passing stone and putting them together; how 
much more will-power was here required than that 
which Agassiz needed to employ when thinking of 
glacial epochs and vast ice-sheets stretching from 
the pole to the Carolinas. Herschel grinding and 
polishing a single telescope mirror for seventeen 
continuous hours, while his sister read to him or 
placed pieces of food in his mouth, was in a frame 
of mind requiring far greater exercise of will, than 
Herschel sweeping the heavens and expanding his 
soul with the sight of multitudes of suns or of a 
new planet swimming into his ken. Demosthenes 
drilling every unpleasant intonation out of the 
voice, every ungracefulness out of the body, was in 
a very different frame of mind from Demosthenes 
swaying an Athenian audience up into a loftier 
patriotism. In the one case will predominates, in 
the other a spontaneous exhilaration carries the 
soul onward. 

In fact it is observable that in almost every great 
growth, in every education that spreads beyond 
narrow bounds or rises above mechanical habits, 
there is an era of intense effort. There is almost 
always at least one season of wavering and gather- 
ing of all the forces of the soul. It came to Sir 
Walter Scott when in mid-life he found himself 



THE WILL. Ill 

bankrupt with enormous liabilities, and he reso- 
lutely set himself to write his way out and pro- 
duced his masterpiece Ivanhoe while sick in bed. 
It came to Thomas Carlyle when the manuscript 
of his masterpiece, his work on the French Revo- 
lution, had been reduced to ashes by the mistake 
of a servant girl. It came to the great mathema- 
tician, Euler, when he lost first the sight of one 
eye, then that of the other, and again when his li- 
brary and all his papers were burned ; man's power 
over it is shown in the list of his original memoirs 
covering fifty-one pages, and in the picture which 
we have of him at seventy-six, stone blind and 
near to death, j^et busy in the labor of revising all 
his works. It must be more or less constantly 
present with men like Prof. Sayce, who though a 
victim of consumption and possessing scarcely 
one lung, yet toils on and keeps himself in the front 
rank of the world's Oriental scholars. It came in 
supreme degree to St. Augustine and Luther, 
Bunyan and Wesley, and was supremely triumphed 
over by them. Three of the most noted French 
men of -letters of to-day are Alexandre Dumas, fils, 
Alphonse Daudet, and Sardou. Paris is perhaps 
the most enlightened center of belles-lettres in the 
world ; here, it would be supposed, merit would 
receive its swiftest recognition. Yet Dumas, with 
all the prestige of his father's name to aid him, 
was brought by repeated failure to the verge of 
suicide before he won a name and place for himself; 
Daudet and Sardou for years lived in garrets 



112 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

and earned the barest subsistence by giving lessons 
or by hack work before fame came to them. Thus 
in the very focus of the world's civilization, among 
the versatile and receptive French people, to those 
in higher and lower circles alike, merit still can 
triumph only by some use of the will. 

THE WILL IN THE FUTURE. 

As the world goes forward there is, in some re- 
spects, an ever greater need of the development 
and use of both an intenser will power and one of 
a higher type. There is a constantly increasing 
need of will power in order to preserve one's indi- 
viduality. The more complex and strenuous mod- 
ern life becomes, the more numerous and intense 
become the influences which tend to break down 
the personal will. All the modern world is full of 
attempts at absorption, demands for uniformity 
and conformity. Never before, therefore, was there 
such need for the possession and exercise of that 
self-energy which makes each individual a distinct 
factor in the world life. 

Never were there also such vast interests and 
organizations to be controlled by individuals into 
their highest fruitfulness. Every new element and 
area added to life calls for a new great will to man- 
age and develop it. Every new concentration of 
force demands an even greater increase of will 
power in the world not merely to prevent the new 
power from running riot, but also to compel it to 
combine in full productiveness with all other forces 



THE WILL. 113 

in the world. Again and again crises come and 
supreme influences appear and no leaders arise with 
wills robust enough to master and utilize them. 
Parnell dies and there is no leader to take his place. 
Thiers, Cavour, Lincoln pass away, and they have 
no immediate successor. Men of intelligence and 
at the same time of leonine will, like Gladstone 
and Bismarck, are the exception. 

The more complex and full of shifting intensities 
modern life becomes, the more complexly and deU- 
cately organized must be the will of the individual. 
It must be able to act now positively with great 
strenuousness, and now to yield lq perfect obedi- 
ence. It must be able to concentrate, to borrow 
from distant regions of the being and from the past 
and future, and to make all converge on a present 
point. It must have the power while yielding 
completely in one part of the nature, to persist and 
act with the greatest intensity in other parts. In 
a word it must be, as we have said, most complexly 
and delicately organized. 

Thus on every hand it appears that modern life 
needs not less development of the will of the indi- 
vidual, but more. It needs that the will be more 
thoroughly developed through every area of the 
being. Even when there is spontaneous growth, 
an element of effort will add something to it. Un- 
less the individual add this, he is not living up to 
his full privilege ; only thus can life get its full in- 
tensity and momentum. 

8 



Il4 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

EDUCATION OF THE WILL. 

The importance of the will-life, both in the proc- 
ess of training and in the after application of its 
results, is yearly more clearly understood by edu- 
cators. More and more is self-activity required of 
the student in all kinds of work. It is insisted 
that the teacher shall do nothing for the young 
mind which it can do for itself. The child must be 
left to do all if possible ; if it cannot do all, then 
the smallest possible hint is given ; as a last resort 
but before the child's will shall have broken down 
in discouragement, a full explanation is to be given. 
The child is to be taught to perceive for itself, dis- 
criminate for itself, judge for itself, initiate little 
enterprises for itself, sustain and press them for- 
ward to a successful issue by itself. Thus it is the 
aim to develop the will into firm but sensitive ac- 
tion in every area of the being. At the same time, 
in all the elements of life, the will is to be trained 
to obedience ; it is to be wrought into effective 
harmony with the general structure of society. 

Educators have thus studied the training of the 
will beginning with the earliest infancy and extend- 
ing the process to the maturest methods of original 
discovery. Outside the schools certain informal 
educative influences also aid effectively in this cul- 
ture. Among these are the privileges and duties 
which come with self-government. Liberty means 
self-activity. As the result of so much personal 
initiative permitted and encouraged, American 
business life is permeated with qualities of energy 



THE WILL. 115 

and pluck which communicate themselves to all 
who vitally come in contact with it. This is illus- 
trated by the rule which Chauncey M. Depew urges 
as vital to success, that the individual must learn, 
after entering into a plan or project never to give 
it up till it has been made either a plain success or 
a plain failure. This may almost be taken as an 
American maxim. On the other hand the same 
self-activity has stirred the higher life of the peo- 
ple. In fact in every sort of work opportunities 
occur daily by which to exercise and develop this 
persistent energetic faculty. This is well illus- 
trated by the striking bit of advice given by Aus- 
tin Phelps to young preachers.^ " Make it an in- 
variable rule not to give up a subject of a sermon 
on which you have begun to write. A vast amount 
of waste of clerical effort is caused by succumbing 
to discouraged effort. The wasted introductions of 
sermons are ^ an exceeding great multitude.^ 
When indicative of a habit they signify mental 
debility. Finish, therefore, everything you under- 
take, for the sake of the mental discipline of suc- 
cess. Make something of the refractory theme 

and the barren text You will often flounder 

through the sermon, not much wiser at the end 
than at the beginning, and hardly knowing how 
you got through. You will be sometimes re- 
minded of Aaron's luckless attempt at statuary. . . . 
Perhaps you will dash it in pieces ; but go through 
the process of making it a likeness of some living 
thing in the heavens, or the earth, or under the 



116 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

earth. You will be the stronger in will-power over 
difficult themes, if nothing else." 

RELATION OF WILL TO RELIGION. 

But as in the other elements of growth, so here 
in the culture of the will, religious development 
has an important, and, if the highest results are 
desired, an indispensable function. Will born of 
religious faith is supreme. In deeply religious 
souls are witnessed intense displays of will power, 
whether in aggressive or resistent action, superior 
to those found anywhere else. All the great races 
of the earth have had powerful volitions as an ele- 
ment of their greatness. The Assyrian, Egyptian, 
Greek, German, English, French, American races 
all possess or have possessed it in some form, but 
of all races the Roman has manifested the most 
intense and effective will power. From Horatius 
to Caesar, and from Csesar to Rienzi, where do we 
find a like splendid line of imperial-minded men, 
grasping the earth and for long centuries control- 
ling it into order ? But the will that was in Paul 
and in the Christian converts was superior to the 
will in these men. Christianity subdued the Roman 
Empire. The will of the martyr was superior to 
the will of the patriot, the will of the missionary 
dominated that of the centurion and pro-consul. 
Nor is the reason difficult to see. Religion gives 
the soul a grasp of the universal and immutable. 
It feeds the will on omnipotence. When such will 
is really possessed, it is irresistible. 



THE WILL. 117 

But while religious culture is intimately associ- 
ated with and can be made effective in developing 
simple, strenuous will force, it has an even more 
important function in developing that complex and 
sensitive will demanded by modern life. Valuable 
as are the secular means of cultivating will power, 
which we have mentioned, they alone are likely to 
make the faculty narrow and self-aggrandizing. A 
certain moral and religious element is essential in 
the highest and most complete culture of this fac- 
ulty. ^ The form of will most difficult to acquire 
and most emphatically demanded by modern life is 
that in which obedience and imperial qualities are 
organized in fruitful harmony. In the development 
of this complex, sensitive will the most difficult 
quality to attain is the right kind of obedience. 
This obedience must be absolute but not servile. It 
must be unquestioning but must leave the faculties 
cheerful, active, even aggressive. In cultivating 
this kind of obedience, the power of religion is 
unique. The first sin was disobedience, and the 
first quality which religion aims to thoroughly de- 
velop is obedience, but an obedience which is pro- 
ductive rather than stifling. Nowhere do we find 
so much obedience and so little law as among relig- 
ious organizations. It gives a broad view, a com- 
prehensive altruism, so that the developing will 
does not clash with others but rather aims to de- 
velop them into a harmonious self-activity in con- 
junction with itself. It creates a will both robust 



118 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION". 

in direct action, and sensitively obedient to proper 
influences. 

Not only can religion thus be made to tell in the 
development of the will ; it also for its own sake 
urges the highest and most finished culture of this 
vital faculty. In almost all great growths we have 
seen that there are eras of depression and profound 
wavering. Nowhere are these so profound and 
vital as in religious experience as is shown in the 
cases of such men as Bunyan and Luther. As 
some one has said, the only real trouble is religious 
trouble. Every form of energy that can sustain 
and carry forward the soul at such seasons is de- 
manded. Religion here for its own sake urges the 
attainment of the utmost will power as well as 
other spiritual forces. This is true in the earlier 
as well as the later stages of religious development. 
Faith has an element of volition. True religion in 
all its parts calls for the highest development of 
that faculty of action and persistence which has 
done so much to save the world in the past, and is 
to do so much more in the future. It demands the 
highest culture of the robust and assertive as well 
as the obedient faculties of the soul in all its areas. 

Mr. Gladstone says,^ " the Christian idea, taking 
possession of man at the center and summit of his 
being, could not leave the rest of it a desert, but 
evidently contemplated its perfection in all its 
parts. I appeal to those great and comprehensive 
words of Saint Paul, which may have been a 
prophecy not less than a precept, and which enjoin 



THE WILL. 119 

US to lay hold on ' whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report,' It is here conveyed to us that in the 
Christian religion there lay, from the very first, the 
certain seed of all human culture," 

THE TRINITY OF GROWTH. 

We find then that there exists a certain trinity 
of growth. In soul development there are an ele- 
ment of expansion, an element of exactness and 
organization, an element of will. These corres- 
pond to the three elements in the new education, 
the desultory course, the scientific-deductive course, 
and self-activity. In the attainment of all of them, 
religious and moral development are deeply related 
and may be made to play a supreme role. Stand- 
ing at the foot of Wesley Lake, where Asbury 
Park and Ocean Grove meet the great ocean, and 
looking lakeward, one sees many small boats mov- 
ing aimlessly about over its surface in short courses. 
Some years ago two small ferryboats also moved 
back and forth from shore to shore, one of them 
clinging to a chain along which it was propelled 
by a crank arrangement. Turning about and look- 
ing out over the ocean, one sees great ships, mov- 
ing swiftly along in direct courses, visiting the ends 
of the earth, guided by the stars of heaven. The 
first picture of those little boats in the lake, is a 
picture of the undeveloped life moving aimlessly 



120 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATIOK. 

between narrow limits or clinging to the chain of 
daily routine. The second is a picture of the de- 
veloped life; it swings round the world, it is 
guided by accurate and lofty ideals, it is driven by 
mighty inner engines. Expansion and accuracy 
and self-activit}^, in part, at least, heaven-derived, 
can make lake-dwellers into ocean voyagers. 



CHAPTER VL 

A NEW BODY. 
THE CHANGED IDEAL. 

IT is too often assumed that the ideal physique 
does not change from age to age. Most peo- 
ple take it for granted that the body admired and 
sought after by the athlete in the Olympian games 
and by the knight in the mediaeval tournament, is 
to be desired and cultivated to-day. The truth 
is that the desirable body changes with the priv- 
ileges and necessities of each stage of human de- 
velopment. It is a variable not a constant. Her- 
cules had the ideal ph^^sique of his age because 
man's surroundings in that day were what they 
were, forests, wild beasts, no weapon more refined 
than a club. Richard the Lion Heart, had the 
ideal body of his day, because the work to be done 
then was what it was ; the data of his age were 
chivalry, armor, walls, battle-axes, superstition, 
tyranny. But neither of these men had the ideal 
physique for the present day, so radically have the 
conditions of life changed. Muscular development 
and physical development are no longer inter- 
changeable terms. Mere muscular development 
no longer adds particularly to a man's privileges 
or efficiency. Samson could not now be a hero by 

(121) 



122 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

virtue of mere physical strength. When a modern 
Parliament House is to be destroyed dynamite is 
used ; the man is not called for who is strong 
enough to pull down supporting columns, but the 
man who is active enough to get safely away after 
depositing the explosive. Of what use would Her- 
cules be in these times ? We kill our Nemean lions 
with bullets. If living now, he might be on exhi- 
bition in a museum, or at best he would be an un- 
usually efficient member of the police force, used to 
keep pugilists from beating inoffensive men. On 
the other hand, if Sullivan had lived three thou- 
sand years ago, his name might now be coupled 
with those of Hector and Achilles as heroes of the 
Trojan war. Wm. B. Curtis could lift over a ton, 
and Dr. Winship lifted thirty-three hundred 
pounds, but neither of them did the world any 
great service. Our hydraulic engines lifting a 
cupola, containing one hundred tons of molten 
steel as a man lifts a cup of coffee, makes such men 
mere curiosities. A pugilist in training can hit a 
blow of over one hundred pounds with his fist. 
But all such blows have been superseded by 
modern artillery, sending projectiles through eight- 
een inches of steel plate armor. What is needed 
in physical development now, is not the arm of a 
Sullivan, but the hand of a Rubenstein. 



In fact, extreme muscular development in this 
age is often an encumbrance rather than an aid. 



A KEW BODY. 123 

The energy of the system is exhausted in sustain- 
ing it. The lungs and heart especially are over- 
taxed. They must send so much blood to the 
muscles that they can send but little to the brain, 
and if required to send more, they often break 
down. Knotted and hardened muscles also hinder 
the circulation and hence the secretion of waste 
products, which latter are now known to be the 
main cause of distress in weariness. One of the 
most trying positions in public life is that of Sec- 
retary of the Treasury in the cabinet of the Presi- 
dent of the United States. Observe some of the 
men who have served in this position ; how differ- 
ent their physiques, how different their powers of 
work. Secretary Sherman was lean, hard and 
flinty Jn bodily constitution, and he came out of 
office stronger for his four years of work. Secre- 
taries Manning and Windom were muscular and 
massive, and both were smitten down in death 
after a few months of onerous labor. Contrast 
Jay Gould and William H. Vanderbilt. Jay 
Gould was small ; he had a body which was little 
more than a brain feeder. He had not much 
muscle, but he had a system of nerves and blood 
vessels which enabled him to do a vast amount of 
brain work. When engaged in intense thought, 
the veins on his forehead would so swell, that ob- 
servers sa}^ the very skull seemed to distend with 
the volume of blood that was passing through his 
brain. Mr. Vanderbilt was large and muscular. 
His body would have made two Gould bodies. But 



124 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

it was not a good brain feeder. One of the arter- 
ies of this organ burst when his mind was severely 
taxed and his career ended. The time was when a 
body so solid and substantial that it seemed a part 
of the fundamental framework of things was the 
ideal physique. Now the ideal is a body which 
seems a part of the active, energetic essence of 
things, vibrating, thrilling, and yet enduring. 

Every decade the demand becomes more explicit 
for a body that is the best possible brain and nerve 
feeder and tool manipulator. Every day physical 
labor becomes more and more a pressure of levers 
and buttons and less a matter of dead lift and 
carry. Man is becoming less a direct physical 
worker himself, and more a manager of work. 
Almost all work is done by machines or* tools. 
The lever is the scepter of the age. We plant and 
reap by pressing levers, we write and make music 
and telegraph thus, we ride cars governed by 
levers, war is reduced to a matter of getting from 
one place to another and pressing levers. If levers 
are superseded it will be by the simpler pressure of 
a button to make electrical connections ; the simple 
lever actions of the arm and hand will be .replaced 
by those in the finger. All parts of the great 
Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago 
are to be manipulated, the floor elevated and de- 
pressed, the dome revolved, by the pressure of 
buttons ; in it we have an illustration of what ma}^ 
come to be the general method of operating the 
material life of the world. To do this work in the 



A NEW BODY. 125 

most effective way, a body is wanted not large, 
but well knit, active and recuperative. The age 
calls for a body that will endure long and repair 
rapidly. Every labor saving machine makes a 
demand for more nerve, less muscle, more activity, 
less weight. 

Not only does the change in the character of 
manual labor, place before us a new ideal physique, 
the enormous increase in high culture privileges 
also make a like change in the physical ideal. The 
vast increase in human knowledge, the accumu- 
lations of art and wisdom, which are to be assim- 
ilated and made a personal possession ; the vast 
material civilization which is to be controlled into 
the highest fruitfulness for the benefit of all ; all 
these require a vast expenditure of brain and 
nervous energy and demand that the body be the 
best possible brain and nerve feeder. New arts 
and sciences rain down from the sky so fast, that 
the imperfectly developed man may be said to be 
kept busy dodging them to save himself from 
destruction. Only the properly organized man 
can master so much of the essence of all as to 
make himself effective in the highest way. The 
camera and printing press send us new privileges 
from all over the world. Steamships transport to 
us with daily accuracy the privileges and wealths 
created by a million trained workers. Kailroads 
pour them out before us in easy profusion. Tele- 
graphs and telephones hurry them to us with 
electric speed. In the eagerness to enjoy all and 



126 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

be an effective part in all, what wonder that many 
break down I Insomnia and nervous prostration, 
neurasthenia and hosts of new nervous and cerebral 
diseases with strange, ominous names appear. 
Men so widely separated in fields of work as 
Ruskin and Huxley, Phillips Brooks and Herbert 
Spencer alike fall as if smitten by an invisible 
hand. 

At first sight man is dismayed by the immensity 
of his privileges and the consequences of trying to 
enter into them all, and he is disposed to think that 
the choice is put before him of the suicide of over- 
work, or the virtual suicide of inaction, or at least 
the partial suicide of a limited life. But what is 
really needed is a new view of the physical ideal, 
and an adjustment to new conditions by making the 
body a better brain and nerve feeder. There have 
been great advances in the past in this respect. 
The latest evidence goes to show that the prevalent 
opinion that peoples living a primitive life are free 
from brain and nervous diseases, and that these are 
characteristic only of modern life with its rushing 
momentum s and whistling velocities and general 
overwork, is erroneous. '' Travelers who give the 
soundest information on the subject," says Dr. D. 
G. Brinton in Science^ " report that in uncultivated 
nations, violent and epidemic nervous seizures are 
ver}^ common. . . . An unexpected blow on the 
outside of a tent throws its occupants into sjDasms. 
The early Jesuit missionaries paint extraordinary 
pictures of epidemic nervons maladies among the 



A NEW BODY. 127 

Iroquois and Hurons. During the middle ages 
there were scenes of this sort which are impossible 
to-day." The law seems to be that " sudden change 
in the social habits and condition of any race, at 
any stage of advancement, will result in a prompt 
development of neurotic disease." " In the District 
of Columbia, for example, the decedents among 
the colored people from nervous diseases often ex- 
ceed those of the white population by thirty-three 
per cent." Since the days when wounded Greeks 
wept and screamed, the increase in human nerve 
force has been marked. With increasing need, in- 
creasing strength of this kind has been acquired. 
Modern life calls not for inaction but for the care- 
ful cultivation of the additional nerve and brain 
power needed. It proclaims that the ideal physique 
is the best brain and nerve feeder. The physical 
ideal has changed and, in the future, this ideal will 
gain an ever greater refinement. 

I. PHYSICAL EXPANSION. 

Of the ideal physique demanded by the new life 
of the world, certain particular features are clear. 
The first is a due expansion of parts of the body. 
In physical, as well as in all other growth, expan- 
sion is first. Of fundamental importance is the 
development of the chest and the organs which it 
contains. The chest is the home of the heart and 
lungs, the great organs of vitality and those per- 
haps most likely to suffer from over-exertion. As 
is well known, in early life the breastbone or ster- 



128 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

num, which joins the upper ribs together is gristly 
and more or less pliable. Before the age of thirty, 
it hardens and can no longer be stretched. The 
first part of physical expansion is rounding out the 
chest while this is still possible. 

What does a depressed flat chest mean? It 
means that the lungs and heart have a dungeon 
to work and grow in. It means that the heart is 
cramped and is perhaps not suffered to grow to its 
natural size. With many struggles and flutter- 
ings it can send but a feeble stream of blood 
through the body. It means that the lungs are 
compressed, weak, and may shrivel up or decay. 
At best they can but imperfectly do their part in 
making the body a rich brain and nerve feeder and 
active implement manipulator. The fresh air 
cannot be made to penetrate by them to the marrow 
of the man. But little of it reaches the feebly cir- 
culating blood which soon degenerates into a stale, 
half-stagnant fluid. The flesh becomes musty and 
the system congested, till at last nature comes 
down upon the man in that tremendous house 
cleaning fury which we call a fever, and either 
drives out the accumulated impurities or kills him 
if the body be not worth the cleaning. In every 
school there should be a physiological museum, and 
the first place in each museum should be occupied 
by a pair of lungs permanently indented by the in- 
pressing ribs as is sometimes found to be the case 
in post-mortem examinations. 

What does a fully expanded and developed chest 



A NEW BODY. 129 

mean ? It means that the lungs and heart have a 
palace to grow and work in. Big lungs draw in 
large drafts of fresh air into which the blood, tired 
and full of waste from its long journey through the 
body, plunges with ease and gladness, and thence 
bounds out, rosy with abundant cleanness, to run 
another journey swift and rejoicing. It means that 
the heart can develop its valves and muscles till, 
like a noble engine, it drives the vital fluid to the 
remotest fiber of the body in any needed abundance, 
when emergencies seek to crush or opportunities 
must be used swiftly and to the utmost. An addi- 
tion of three inches in the perimeter of the chest 
gives an increase of fift}^ cubic inches in lung capac- 
ity. This addition is often of fundamental import- 
ance. Some one has said that a forty inch chest 
is a better start in life than ten thousand dollars. 
At least we can say, with the chest fully enlarged 
and its organs developed, let pleurisy, pneumonia 
or ghostly consumption come, they will find a well 
ribbed and rounded bosom which, in all ordinary 
cases, will be to them a flinty and impregnable for- 
tress. Let opportunities for an ever larger and 
more eflTective life come, streams of vitality will 
flow out upon them, adequate to their full mastery 
and utilization. 

Not only does the chest structure solidifj^ early 
in life, the same is true of other parts of body. 
The nerves and nerve centers for example, take on 
a more or less fixed character before the age of 
twenty-five. The nsrve centers stiffen, become 
9 



130 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

stubborn and intractable and any great loosening 
and development of them must take place earlier. 
One of the discoveries of the last fifty years is that 
impulses travel along the nerves at a perfectly 
measurable and surprisingly low rate of from one 
hundred to one hundred and twenty-five feet a 
second, or about as fast as a greyhound runs. Per- 
ceptions of the outside world, sensations of pain, 
and commands from the brain to the muscles move 
along the nerves at this rate. But the rate varies 
in different persons, and can be increased in early 
life. So also the nerve centers while immature can 
be made mobile, and can extend their powers of 
instinctive action. It is also important that the 
blood vessels of the body, the veins and arteries, 
should be enlarged to their full power of action. 
That expansion and strengthening of them which 
will enable the energies of the body to gather to- 
gether with a kind of ample ease, and to flow read- 
ily to or from any given part of it, are demanded. 
The first part of the physical culture needed in this 
new life of the world is thus to fully enlarge these 
and all other organs ; in a word, everywhere to lay 
broad foundations and to build an ample framework 
of vitality. 

II. PHYSICAL ORGANIZATION. 

As in growth in general so in .physical develop- 
ment, after needed enlargement and often along 
with it, comes a proper, thorough organization. 
All the parts and organs of the body need to be co- 



A NEW BODY. 131 

ordinated and made fruitfully interactive in the 
highest degree. The bod}^ is to be made ready so 
that any combination or succession of phj^sical acts 
which events may call for, will be performed in- 
stinctively and with the utmost economy. The 
nerves are to be trained to measure accurately, and 
hence the nerve centers and the whole structure to 
act harmoniously. The body must be made a unit. 

The awkward man is made up of separate parts ; 
he is, in American phrase, numerous. His parts 
are ever quarreling. The head hates the neck, his 
two legs are deadly enemies, there is civil war be- 
tween his arms, his feet are perpetually 'trying to 
secede from the body, there is a feud in every joint, 
his fibers are saturated \fith domestic strife. This 
outward awkwardness is but a visible picture of 
the even more wasteful internal lack of harmony 
and adaptation. It all means waste of energy, loss 
of time, diminished life. But the graceful man is 
now here, now there, and he is all together. How- 
ever he moves, he can keep all of himself in any 
given part of himself. This is true not only of the 
superficial and more massive parts of the body, all 
elements and fibers also, the cells and vessels of a 
hidden organ, can be taught to act gracefully to- 
gether and with intense effectiveness. 

The right kind of physical culture should develop 
a little brain in every nerve center and finger tip ; 
intelligence, memor}^, accurate powers of percep- 
tion, should be wrought through every organ and 
fiber and established as permanent local structure. 



132 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

Thus there will be no waste of action, but rather 
every energy expended will go out with fruitful 
power, multiplying its effectiveness in many direc-- 
tions. The physical being will act in steady and 
swift co-rhythm with the best of all that is in the 
universe. 

III. THE PHYSICAL WILL. 

As in general growth, so in physical develop- 
ment, the third element is the culture of the will. 
In the ph^'sical realm the will should have the same 
training as in other parts of the being. The body 
must be made to act and obey with a kind of will 
of its own. TVhen dangers or opportunities come, 
the energies of the body ^liould rise into action of 
themselves. The whole physical being should be 
instinct with a kind of celerit}^ of obedience and 
self-action. The rushing momentums, the stresses 
and velocities of the age demand it. Each nerve 
should learn to decide something for itself, and to 
act without referring the inatter to the higher 
organism. Thus both the general will for action, 
obedience and control is to be made stronger, and 
also little wills are to be created in every center, 
and almost we might say in every fiber, which will 
know when and how to act and when to obey. 

Particularl}' does this age demand the utmost 
development of that will power which enables one 
to rest at a desired time, and to recuperate and 
store up large reserves to be used as opportunity 
may make profitable. Never was it so useful as 



A NEW BODY. 183 

now. to l3e able to throw at will the life of many 
days into one, and to be comparatively lifeless for 
days after. Opportunities and inspirations come 
to every man. Well for him and for the world if 
he have the power when they come to use them to 
the utmost, if he have the power to call up years 
of slow preparation and storage, and- borrow also 
from the future, and make all converge on the 
present. 

It is the Victor Hugo who can write his best play 
in nine days ; it is the Hawthorne, who can com- 
pose his matchless prose for twenty-five hours with- 
out stop or harm ; it is the clerg^^man whose eye 
grows not less bright and cheek not less ruddy 
during a three months revival; it is the lawyer 
who for a week expends three times as much energy 
as his system produces to win the case that helps 
on right and makes him famous, it is these men 
who have x^ower to smite the world onward. The 
King of to-day has the halo of established health 
about his brow. He has the standing reserve of 
health, to thrust aside little shocks, chills, inroads, 
insidious approaches of a thousand diseases, and at 
the same time to rush out with utter abandon upon 
any opportunity of supreme potentiality'. 

There is a little air-breathing insect- compelled 
by its enemies to live most of the time under water. 
When it is safe to do so, it rises to the surface and 
rapidly aerates its blood and then proceeds to store 
up oxygen in the body. It can store up enough 
to supply it for two dayg, so that during this long 



134 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

time it can pursue its life beneath the surface with- 
out the necessity of rising and breathing. By 
proper will cultivation, man can greatly increase 
his power to store up reserves in his body. It is 
said that De Lesseps,the builder of the Suez canal, 
could sleep as much as eighteen or twenty hours a 
day for several days in succession, and then go al- 
most without sleep for a week. The philosopher 
Kant, after a whole day of intense, abstract think- 
ing, could, by an exercise of his will, in a few min- 
utes break up every line of thought, and then lie 
down to rest in dreamless, unbroken sleep. It is 
men who thus at will can break up and decompose 
consciousness, who can make all an unorganized 
mist before the mind, who can change brain life into 
nerve or sense life, or unconscious physical, food 
and storage life, and who can do this for long peri- 
ods if desirable, it is these that have the best basis 
for growth and for growth-causing power. 

A counterpart to those forms of will which en- 
able one to live and act with great intensity at 
times and to live as little as possible at others, is 
that form which teaches the accurate and moderate 
use of the powers. It makes easy the physical use 
of that exactness which knowledge gives. It con- 
trols mere physical impulse, appetite in all its 
forms. It helps one to observe in practice at all 
times the difference between what we may term 
(using the words in a popular rather than in a 
scientific sense) a stress and a strain. 

If a piece of India rubber be stretched slightly, 



A NEW BODY. 135 

when freed it will return to its original length. 
This kind of pull may be called a stress. If it be 
stretched very hard, when freed it will not return 
altogether, but will remain permanently^ lengthened. 
That is a strain. Bend a stick lightly and it will 
fl}' back ; bend it violently and it will break or re- 
main bent. The first bending is a stress, the second 
is a strain. 

Proper exercise consists mainly of stresses. 
Strains produce damaging breaks and lesions, 
stresses beget growth, development. By subject- 
ing one's self to mild stresses, one becomes able to 
endure what originally would have been a strain. 
Early should each one get both the knowledge and 
the will which will prevent him from entering fierce 
competitive contests beyond his strength, and likely 
to result in permanent injur}^ to some part of the 
physical mechanism. In each physiological mu- 
seum should be placed a picture or a model of a 
heart with a valve torn out, as an English physician 
found to be the case in the body of a man who had 
strained himself to death, and of a pair of lungs 
engorged with blood, like Renforth's, England's 
greatest oarsman, who fell over dead in his boat in 
the middle of a race. But particularly^ should the 
j^outhful will be educated to the thorough control 
of physical impulses. Mere uncontrolled appetite 
is still the world's greatest, most comprehensive 
curse. It rots the walls of blood vessels, enfeebles 
the heart, saps the vital strength, breaks life down 
into ineffectiveness. It makes the gain of civiliza- 



136 A NEW LIFE IN EDrrCATION. 

tion the merest fraction from century to century. 
If, by any means, the young will can b6 taught 
to first master the simpler and more controllable 
appetites and thence proceed systematically to the 
control of the more complex and intense ones, and 
if this can be accomplished in any widespread 
way, the gain to the world will be beyond definite 
measurement. 

I. THE SW^EDISH SYSTEM. 

The cultivation of the body to its highest effi- 
ciency in this age, therefore, includes a due expan- 
sion of certain of its parts, a thorough co-ordina- 
tion of its organs and elements, and a careful 
cultivation of the physical will. If we turn to the 
methods of physical culture in use, we observe a 
growing realization of the nature of the new physi- 
cal ideal. Each of the better systems of physical 
training now used, has at least some one of the 
features of the new ideal definitely in view. 

One of the most prominent of the new methods 
is known as the Swedish system.^ Originating in 
Sweden, it is in general use there. Introduced into 
this country, it has met with great favor, having 
been adopted in the Boston Public Schools and in 
many leading institutions. One of its most promi- 
nent exponents says '' the Swedish system disap- 
proves of and discards all movements which com- 
press the chest (such as Indian club swinging) or 
which in any way interfere with free respiration, 
and the greatest attention is given to the proper 



A NEW BODY. 137 

development of the chest. In recognition of the 
fact that to be truly strong, a man must know how 
to breathe well," much prominence has been given 
to " respiratory exercises." Also, " in judging of 
the effects of an exercise, we think the least of the 
muscular development produced." ^' We think all 
the more of the effects produced on nerves, vessels, 
etc., for the results in this direction can be vastly 
changed by varying the movements (as demon- 
strated in Medical Gymnastics)." Again, '' meas- 
uring a man's strength, we compare the man to 
himself; we do not say that a man is strong be- 
cause he can hold so much air, or because he can 
lift so many pounds, or because he can jump so high. 
But when he possesses a healthy, well-balanced, 
and well-proportioned body, which his will has un- 
der good control, then he possesses physical cul- 
ture, even though in the eyes of some he may seem 
weak as compared to others." 

When we now come to examine particular exer- 
cises, we find for example '' arch flexions " insisted 
on as soon as the pupil is prepared for them ; these 
consist of backward flexions of the trunk ; they 
have the effect of straightening the back, of vault- 
ing the chest forward by drawing the lower ribs 
apart, and of cultivating the extensibility of the 
upper region of the abdomen. In like manner, 
" lateral trunk movements," and abdominal exer- 
cises further expand and develop the great trunk 
cavity in which the vital organs live and work. 
In order more thoroughly to cultivate concentra« 



1S8 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

tion of the attention and intensity of will, the exer- 
cises are conducted entirely by word of command. 
The teacher does not go through the exercise, the 
scholar imitating him, nor is a certain routine fol- 
lowed by memory. The pupil is taught instantly 
to respond to some unexpected word of command. 
The use of music even is not allowed, to help carry 
the student forward by its rhythm. 

Here is a system which aims to give a physical 
development definitely adapted to the age. It 
puts expansion, cultivation of the vital organs, 
nerves, blood-vessels, first and before muscular de- 
velopment ; it makes prominent the culture of the 
will. It has its faults ]3erhaps ; it may be for in- 
stance that the attention and the will are put to 
too severe a strain ; nevertheless the system con- 
tains many elements of the utmost importance. 

Closely connected with the Swedish system of 
physical culture, is the Swedish system of manual 
training, which is being rapidly incorporated into 
the school of our cities. The purpose of man- 
ual training is not only to give knowledge and 
abilities which will be of much practical value in 
themselves, but also to give a high type of phys- 
ical culture. While making the body directly a 
tool manipulator, it is also found to make it a 
better brain and nerve feeder. M. Salicis/ founder 
of the Ecole Tournefort at Paris, says of the use 
of it, " Children thrive notwithstanding their at- 
tendance in school is longer by two hours than 
regulations provide." Sir Philip Magnus, who 



A NEW BODY. 139 

made an examination of schools on the continent, 
says, " I was much struck with the superior phys- 
ique of boys engaged in workshops over those oc- 
cupied the whole day in sedentary pursuits." A 
constructive element in physical culture seems to 
give a stimulus toward and a swifter attainment 
of the new physical ideal. 

II. GERMAN AND ENGLISH SYSTEMS. 

The German system of gymnastics and the Eng- 
lish system of out-door sports also both have feat- 
ures the use of which is important in this attain- 
ment. The Swedish system develops the individ- 
ual will, the German develops the associate will. 
In the German turn verein, great stress is laid on 
combination, complex class drills. Children are 
taken while still young and trained in classes. 
Wills are taught to interact harmoniously to a 
given end. The English system develops the spon- 
taneous will. In out-door sports, the will of each 
player is ti^ght to respond not so much to the will 
of another, as in the Swedish system, as to the needs 
of a situation. The power of swiftly grasping a 
crisis and taking a sudden and firm initiative is 
cultivated. Thus the well developed German sys- 
tem is an expressive reflex of that great system of 
national development, by which the wills of the 
German people have been united into one dynamic, 
national or race will. The English system is in like 
manner indicative of national characteristics. The 
Englishman takes delight in watching a game of 



140 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

cricket, because it is a vivid exhibition of those 
practical qualities of presence of mind, stubborn 
defence, and aggressive action which have carried 
English greatness over the world. The Germans 
point with pride to their armies marching as a unit 
on Sedan in a single night, and crushing Louis 
Napoleon. The English point with like pride to 
Gladstone bowling and batting the cricket ball on 
the common at Eton, and thus gaining that vigor 
which enables him to-day to bowl along the larger 
sphere, the earth, toward progress ; they point to 
him at sixty-eight hewing down trees by the hour 
in his park and thus gaining that activity and 
aggressive power which enabled him to hew down 
a whole wilderness of Irish abuses. The English 
and American system of out-door sports, beside the 
^; valuable cultivation of a characteristic will, also 

give a fineness and sweetness of vigor, not be- 
stowed by indoor gymnastic work. Actual fiber 
gained indoors seems often artificial, heavy, stale. 
But fiber gained on the turf and in the sunshine 
is elastic and sweet. It is full of sunshine, of the 
green vigor of the turf, and the blue serenity of 
the sky. Hence the English system properly regu- 
lated supplies essential elements, not afforded else- 
where, in obtaining the most effective physique. 

III. OTHER ELEMENTS OF PHYSICAL LIFE. 

Not only in specific and adapted methods of phys- 
ical training do we find a recognition of a new ideal, 
but also in the careful study that is being made of 



A NEW BODY. 141 

those methods and habits of life, which go to make 
the body the best brain and nerve feeder and the 
most active manipulator of material things. A new 
chemistry and a new biolog}^ have made possible. a 
scientific study of foods, for instance. General 
knowledge with regard to them is rapidly increas- 
ing. Restaurants begin to advertise, not the cheap- 
ness of their articles, but the fact that they have 
taken prizes in cooking competitions. It is rare to 
meet a man to-day who does not understand that a 
beefsteak contains more energy than a cabbage, and 
that it takes less energy to extract it. The Amer- 
ican people are* now the best fed in the world, and 
hence are able to do the most productive work. In 
the matter of clothing, its protecting and invigor- 
ating qualities are taking the first place in the at- 
tention, esthetic quality is coming next, and mere 
conventionality is receding into the back ground, 
and giving promise that in time it will become the 
last. French caprice no longer holds undisputed 
sway. In America man has emancipated woman 
from his undue control, and woman is now proceed- 
ing to further emancipate herself from the unnec- 
essary conventionality in dress and other elements 
of life. 

Again, it is being recognized that a ph3^sician 
who can attend a family, and keep its members 
working at maximum eflSciency is more valuable 
than one who merely cures its diseases, and in fact 
to a large extent makes the latter superflous. Com- 
petent authorities estimate that one-half of lives 



142 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATIOK. 

are lost from ignorant violations of simple laws of 
health ; and it may be added that one-half of the 
efficiency of the remainder is destroyed in the same 
way. The efficiency of the race can probably be at 
least doubled by the right physical development 
and habits of life. 

SELECTION AND ADAPTION. 

While higher conceptions of the physical ideal 
are beginning to gain ground, and while some ap- 
propriate methods of work are appearing and being 
employed, much remains to be done. Nowhere has 
there been more crude empiricism*than in methods 
of physical culture. What will suit the Swede, 
may not suit the more nervous American. What 
is best for the hemmed-in German, may not be best 
for the free Anglo-Saxon. One professional man 
sees another recuperate by use of the bicycle or 
chest weights and he at once and in every respect 
imitates him, ignorant that the use of the bicycle 
sometimes seriously affects the kidneys, and that the 
right use of chest weights often requires a long 
course of preliminary training. To farm a piece of 
ground to the best advantage, requires years of ex- 
periment and observation. The human body is 
much more complex than a piece of ground, and re- 
quires much careful experiment and observation, to 
develop it into its highest efficiency. All the best 
systems of physical education are now transplanted 
to our shores ; the problem before the general edu- 



A NEW BODY. 143 

cator is to select and combine and adapt, and thus 
form the best general method for school work. 

Beside this scheme of physical culture to be 
worked out, it remains for each individual to dis- 
cover and form the best possible system of physical 
life for himself Philip Gilbert Hamerton in his 
Intellectual Life mentions the case of a man, 
afflicted with moroseness and continual depression 
of spirits, who was changed into a happy, cheerful 
man by simply eating a light breakfast instead of 
the heavy breakfast of fried eggs and bacon to 
which he was accustomed. With most individuals 
a single change is not sufficient. The writer knows 
of another man formerly in imperfect health, who 
was restored to full efficiency of physical life only 
after he had stopped eating apples before going to 
bed, and imperfectly cooked oatmeal for breakfast, 
ceased drinking hard limestone water, and taking a 
daily bath which was sapping his vitality. If a 
man will keep a careful oversight of himself and 
his fluctuations of energy, he can learn almost every 
week, some new fact in the economy of diet or daily 
routine which will add much to the efficiency of 
his physical life. In the matter of exercise or 
physical recreation he particularly learns the lesson 
of personal adaptation. He learns how best to 
combine indoor exercise with recreative life in the 
fresh air ; what gymnastic work is sufficient to send 
the blood bounding to the remotest cell of the body, 
and how best then in the open air to fill that blood 
with oxygen, and thus stimulate all the functions 



144 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

to an easy efficiency and fill the bod}^ with new life. 
He learns in time that if he take his walks each 
day to the leeward of the town, he continues to 
breathe the gases and used up air blown there- 
from, while if he walk to the windward, he breathes 
that germless . air which has blown perhaps over 
mountain and forest for a hundred miles and has 
gained in purity and vigor all the. way. He learns 
the elevated points in the neighboring country, and 
walking to one or more of them daily lets his mind 
wander for a few moments over the landscape and 
gather a broad exhilaration. He learns all those 
diversities and uniformities which fill him as an in- 
dividual with the most fruitful vigor of nerve and 
brain. 

THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 

If we turn again to the moral and religious 
element in education, we find that it has a most im- 
portant relation to physicial culture. The prog- 
ress of the past and the hope of the future alike 
are found essentially in Christianity. The new 
physical ideal is in the main but the expression 
and outcome of Christian ideas. Jesus gave the 
world higher conceptions of man, his duty, useful- 
ness and privileges. He opened vistas of higher 
and nobler life. As man has attempted to realize 
these, his views of himself and his physical nature 
have been refined and ennobled. The instant re- 
sult of Christ's doctrine is seen in Paul's solemn, 
almost awful question " Know ye not that your 



A NEW BODY. 145 

body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" The 
human race since Paul has been trying to grasp 
the fall meaning of this solemn new ideal, and has 
taken but a few steps in realization of it. 

Christian training also has power to help men 
to go on further in this progressive attainment of 
the physical ideal, which is presented to us and re- 
quired of us. A large part of ph3'sical culture is 
simply getting morality, punctuality, temperance, 
courage, obedience organized into the various parts 
of the body. 

The penances of religious devotees show the 
power over the body which religious feeling gives 
the possessor. If religion can give such power to 
punish and to scourge, it ought to bestow still 
greater power to control and to develop. The 
three ideas of sin, of duty, and of blessedness are 
the three strongest in the whole gamut of human 
motives ; given that they have possession of a man, 
they have power completely to control him. Let 
the individual thoroughly feel that to neglect any 
law of health is a sin ; let him feel that to develop 
himself to the highest efficiency of physical life, in 
order that he may thus live a longer and more in- 
tensely useful life, is a duty ; let him feel that to 
be full of radiant vigor, to be a part of the active, 
thrilling essence of all things, is one of his most 
blessed privileges ; let him feel that this blessed- 
ness brings a thousand other blessednesses and he 
has motives which will control him from all ex- 
cesses, make him patient and persevering in effort, 

10 



146 A NEW LIFE m EDUCATION. 

and fill him with an expansive ambition to attain 
every possible fulness and effectiveness of physical 
life. Physical culture is being carried on in the 
most rapid and efficient way, only when in conjunc- 
tion with moral and religious development. 







CHAPTER VII. 

ADULT EDUCATION. 

THE people's purpose. 

NE of the most striking phenomena of the 
closing 3^ears of the nineteenth century is 
the development, in the leading nations of the 
world, of what may be termed systems of adult 
education. These movements take different forms 
in different lands, but everywhere the common pur- 
pose is manifesting itself among men in all stages 
of life and labor, to learn and enjoy the best that 
is to be known. Machinery is making leisure, 
popular government is distributing it, the people 
are more and more expending it in gaining knowl- 
edge and thus getting a broader and firmer grasp 
of the stream of existence in which they find them- 
selves placed. 

I, IN THE LAND OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. 

One form in which this movement appears in 
Germany is in what are known as " continuation 
schools." By means of these, those who have 
graduated from what correspond to our public 
schools, and are engaged in occupations by which 
they gain a livelihood, can, in special afternoon or 
evening schools during from five to twelve hours 

(147) 



148 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

per week further carry on their education. ^' So^ 
complete is this system that even the waiters at 
the hotels, up to the age of seventeen, attend after- 
noon classes, and are taught one or two foreign 
languages." In some parts of Germany continua- 
tion education is compulsory. In other parts of 
Germany and in Switzerland opinion is ripening 
into a conviction that this form of education should 
be compulsory for even the poorest classes, and it is 
^' in contemplation to extend it to all the States of 
the Empire, and Austria will probably follow suit." 
Besides this more general system of continuation 
education, there are special institutions scattered 
through Germany whose function is the education 
of adults. Thus in Berlin, there is the very inter- 
esting Urania Gesellschaft,^ an institution whose 
object is the general scientific instruction of the 
people free of charge. It is a joint stock compan}^, 
but is supported in part by the government. In 
less than a" year, over nine hundred lectures were 
given to audiences averaging over a thousand. Six 
telescopes are provided for the use of visitors. 
'' The physical department is even better supplied 
with apparatus than the astronomical, and it is so 
arranged that visitors, by pressing different but- 
tons may view the spectra of various substances, 
the phenomena of polarization, and many electrical 
effects. The recent presentation of two complete 
phonographs by Mr. Edison gives the science col- 
lection ... a still higher value." A journal 
is published free to ail members. The large gen- 



ADULT EDUCATIOK. 149 

eral attendance as well as that at the lectures shows 
how highly appreciated and valuable is the work 
done by this institution. 

n. IN THE LAND OF ARTS. 

In France, the overthrow of 1870 wrought 
many profound changes. One result is a vastly im- 
proved educational system, including provisions 
for adult education. It was decided that not only 
must the children be educated, but also that the 
body of the people must be kept educated. Hence 
the French have developed evening, Sunday, ap- 
prentice and continuation schools, science and art 
schools for adults, and lecture sj^stems of all kinds.*^ 
Instruction in all cases is gratuitous. " The 
evening instruction is considered the most striking 
feature of the present condition of educational ef- 
fort in France." " Paris is especially liberal in 
this respect, maintaining a great number of com- 
mercial and industrial and art and science schools, 
where after the labors of the day, artisans pursue 
the study of special subjects relating to their vo- 
cations." 

But beside this technical instruction to adults, 
general public lectures are also given, whose object 
is liberal culture. The most noteworthy case is 
the College de France. When any great man ap- 
pears in any department of French intellectual life, 
a chair may be provided for him in the College de 
France, where he delivers lectures in the evening, 
so that men busy in professional work can attend 



150 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

them and keep abreast of the best culture of the 
world. Journalists, literateurs, lawyers, all classes 
whether culture be primary or secondary to them, 
avail themselves of these advantages. Maspero, 
the Egyptologist, thus lectures. Thus Renan was 
enabled to mould the intellectual life of the French 
capital. 

III. IN A REMOTE PROVINCE. 

Nor is adult education on the continent of Eu- 
rope confined to the two leading culture nations, 
France and Germany. It is very significant to 
read that, in Finland, an arctic province of Russia, 
not only does a very eflScient system of elementary 
education exist, so that practically all inhabitants 
can read and write, but also adult education is mak- 
ing an increasing place for itself Numerous agri- 
cultural and similar practical schools have been 
established throughout the land, where adults are 
taught and ^' where the teachings of the university 
and the dis(?overies of the laboratory are brought 
within the reach of the humblest classes. '^ The 
peasants of the remotest hamlets have their news- 
paper, and so keep in touch with the world's prog- 
ress. An association in Helsingfors has opened a 
people's library where books, journals and reviews 
are at the disposal of the people, and " the work- 
ingmen come in thousands in autumn and winter 
to read them." If such can take place in a remote 
province, it means that profound influences are at 
work. 



ADULT EDUCATIOl^. 151 

IV. IN THE LAND OF COMMERCE AND DOMINION. 

In England organized adult education chiefly 
takes the well-known form of University Extension. 
The movement has spread so widely there, and has 
become so thoroughly established, that a special 
class of instructors has arisen making this kind of 
education their life-work, and a distinct class of 
text-books has been written for it. A government 
grant in aid of the movement is being agitated. 

Many facts go to show that the people have been 
roused to self-activity in the matter. '' At several 
centers in the North of England^ the courses have 
been regularly attended by many hundreds of 
artisans, and the funds to defray the expenses of 
these lectures have been provided by workingmen's 
societies. The results of the examinations have in 
many places been most satisfactory." " Teachers 
bear testimony to the efficiency and capacity of the 
students." During the summer vacations, the uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge are opened to 
those who have excelled in University Extension 
work elsewhere. In England adult and recreative 
education also takes the form of education by guilds, 
many of which receive government aid. Many 
thousands of artisans in one hundred and thirteen 
towns are reached by this form of education. In 
Manchester, a simple cotton operative made such 
progress in one of these schools that he gained a 
silver medal in honors over a great number of com- 
petitors, and in consequence was appointed super- 
intendent of a large establishment. This furnishes 



152 A KEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

a simple but striking illustration of the new ways 
in which the people are using their power in order 
to elevate themselves. 

V. IN THE HOME LAND. 

Transplanted to this country the method of Un- 
iversity Extension has been rapidly embodied in 
the intellectual life of the^ people as a method of 
adult education. It is estimated that it has directly 
reached fifty thousand people in the neighborhood 
of Philadelphia. The movement is aided by a 
state appropriation in New York. The University 
of Chicago has a regularly paid University Exten- 
sion Faculty, co-ordinate with its other Faculties. 

But the most widely extended system of adult 
education in the United States is the Chautauqua 
Literary and Scientific Circle. It is safe to say 
that almost every town of considerable size in the 
northern states has felt the influence of this move- 
ment for self-education by the American people. 
Its graduates number half a million. The move- 
ment has become general among the churches. The 
Roman Catholics have a summer school after the 
pattern of the Chautauqua Assembly. Jewish 
literary societies are uniting under a plan similar 
to the general Chautauquan method. It is hard to 
measure the manifold direct and indirect influence 
of these movements for good in stirring up all 
other educational influences in this land and those 
that bear on a generally higher life. Chautauqua 
and University Extension have led to the formation 



ADtTLT EDUCATIOIS^ 153 

of more or less permanent and more or less formal 
clubs, lecture associations, and classes for mutual 
improvement ; they have created a culture element 
in the daily newspapers ; they have helped develop 
a vast periodical literature such as is found nowhere 
else in the world ; in all these ways they are pro- 
foundly enriching American life. 

woman's place in adult education. 

These general results are bound to be greatly in- 
creased by the higher education of woman. In 
France but five or six per cent, of the pupils in 
the secondary schools (those between the primary 
schools and the colleges) are girls, while in America 
in the same grade of institutions, the number of 
girls is to the number of boys as five to four. The 
number of young women taking a liberal college 
education is also likely in the near future to exceed 
the number of young men. The beginning of the 
twentieth century will probably see the women of 
America better educated than the young men. 
This is a fact of the utmost importance when we 
take into account the other fact, that women of 
America are rapidly becoming the leisure class and 
virtual aristocracy of the land. Here where leisure 
is being so rapidly made, it is being handed over to 
the women of the country to be used to the best ad- 
vantage. The better educated woman is, the 
higher is the use which she makes of this leisure, 
and the more of it does she turn to her own contin- 
uation education and the education of others. 



154 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

Hence we find culture clubs composed of women 
springing up all over the land, even small towns 
sometimes containing two or three. The effect of 
these in maintaining the culture of families, in 
keeping business men broadened and full of the 
best thought of the time, and inspiring the best 
education of children can scarcely be overestimated 
in its future results. 

FREE PUBLIC LIBRARIES. 

One of the most noteworthy features of adult 
education in the United States is the movement 
toward free or practically free Public Libraries. 
The inspiration and example of the Boston Free 
Public Library has been of almost untold value. 
Most of the large cities in this land now have a 
public library of some sort. In 1884 there were 
more than five thousand public libraries in the 
United States, containing more than twenty million 
volumes, or one volume to every two and a half 
inhabitants. 

Men like Carnegie, Tilden, Newberry and Crerar, 
make libraries their special benefactions. " An im- 
perfect report of the gifts and bequests to libraries 
in the United States of which record could be 
obtained, which was made to the conference of 
librarians in San Francisco in October, 1891, placed 
the total at nearly twenty-four millions of dollars. 
Besides this some states are making laws and 
appointing Free Public Library Commissions, with 
a view to aiding localities in establishing free libra- 



ADULT EDUCATION, 165 

ries. The commission appointed in Massachusetts 
in 1890 assisted thirty-seven towns in establishing 
these, so that in 1891 out of three hundred and 
fifty-three towns in the state two hundred and 
eighty-three had libraries free, or open to the public 
at a nominal charge. New Hampshire has a simi- 
lar Commission. Such facilities cannot but be a 
powerful agency in the education of adults and the 
young alike. 

I. VALUE IN SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 

A general survey of the most cultured countries 
of the world thus shows a distinct movement to- 
ward organized adult or continuation education. 
*' Education^ is no longer regarded as belonging to 
one period of life or to particular learned classes, 
but is tending to be recognized as a constant inter- 
est of adult life, side b}^ side with religion, politics 
and commerce.^' The people are realizing that 
''man needs knowledge not only as a means of 
livelihood but as a means of life." The nineteenth 
century has settled the question of popular rights. 
The twentieth is to solve the problem of the use to 
be made of them. In adult and recreative educa- 
tion we are entering on one way of using popular 
rights and the leisure gained and distributed by 
them. Such a movement means much for the gen- 
eral happiness and welfare of the people. It is 
something like a new era when the artisan of Bir- 
mingham uses the laboratories of Cambridge, the 
plumber of London those of Oxford, when the 



156 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION', 

socialist of Berlin has the culture and scientific 
appliances of the world's greatest educational center 
at his command, when the reporter of the Paris 
newspaper may hear at no cost the lectures of 
Maspero, when the peasant of Finland has agricul- 
tural and forestry schools, and when the negro 
freedman and pauper immigrant of the United States 
have free public schools for early life and free pub- 
lic libraries for after life. In some lands and under 
certain conditions, the movement may solve diflS- 
cult social problems. The sincerely dissatisfied 
classes in the world are those that desire a fuller 
life and believe that they are unjustly shut oflT from 
it. The prime cause of real discontent is a hedged- 
in life. Anarchists and socialists, whatever the 
outward form of their complaints, are making in 
reality implicit, inarticulate demands for growth. 
Their ravings are dumb cries for a fuller life. It 
is significant then to hear a member of the English 
Parliament, who has made a study of the subject, 
say, that largely owing to the benefits of continua- 
tion schools, in Germany " there is no such thing 
as an uneducated class ; there are no such things 
speaking broadly as neglected uncared for children. 
.... They find by experience that wherever 
it [the continuation school] is adopted it gives an 
enormous advantage to the people in the competi- 
tion of life, and, above all, trains them to habits 
of industry and mental application. I believe that 
it is owing to this system of thorough education 
that Germany has almost extinguished the pauper 



ADULT EDUCATION. 157 

and semi-pauper class, which is the bane and dis- 
grace of our country. . . . Indeed I have not 
seen since I left home a single case of a ragged or 
begging child." 

II. VALUE IN FORMAL EDUCATION. 

Not only may general continued education thus 
have a profound direct effect on the social and 
political condition of a people and their general 
welfare, it also, as we have already suggested, 
deeply affects and benefits the whole educational 
system of a land. A fully effective scheme of train- 
ing can be had only when the people as a whole are 
educated and kept educated and move forward as a 
living unit. The schools cannot be much in ad- 
vance of the people's ideas. Schools are what the 
teachers make them, teachers are such as school 
boards select, and school boards represent the peo- 
ple, their intelligence and desires when the com- 
munity is enlightened and wide-awake, but too 
often otherwise merely their indifference and ignor- 
ance. Hence the schools are largely a reflex of the 
people. 

Thi^ also is particularly true in a country where 
the people rule. In Germany an intelligent and 
progressive Minister of Public Instruction can 
do much of himself, but in America we must have 
people at least appreciative of good schools and able 
to select good teachers and systems. Adult educa- 
tion keeps the schools adapted to the needs of the 
life of the land and organically interactive with 



158 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

them. The people are thus enabled to transfer the 
knowledge of the schools into practical life and 
propagate it through all elements of life ; they are 
also enabled more intelligently to transfer practical 
facts and economies, and the best and freshest busi- 
ness and common sense principles into the schools. 
In this double way they keep the schools in live 
harmony with the life of the world. In the old 
days when education pertained only to the youth- 
ful training of a particular class for some special 
purpose, as the priesthood or diplomacy, education 
became a thing apart. It did not progress and in 
many cases degenerated. But now, parents that 
are themselves growing are keenly appreciative of 
the growth processes of the child, and become intel- 
ligently and earnestly watchful that the child shall 
have every facility of teacher, appliance and sys- 
tem. 

The consummation of the movement will be a 
perfected and coherent system of national educa- 
tion as an indispensable part of the national life. 
Prof. R. G. Moulton, formerly of England, says, 
" When the tendency is complete, we may expect 
to see the (adult) nation all over the country 
organizing itself for educational purposes, still 
making use of ^universities,' 'colleges,' etc., as 
bodies of educational specialists, but itself carry- 
ing on the administration of the education in local 
institutions or unions of local institutions, so that 
universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, 
etc., will be merged into a wider University of 



ADULT EDTJCATIOIT. 159 

England; just as Hhe state' means [not Parlia- 
ment] but the nation acting in its political capac- 
ity [through crown, Houses of Parliament, munici- 
pal councils, local boards, magistrates, juries, elec- 
toral constituents, etc.,] so the ^ University of 
England ' will mean the nation acting in its educa- 
tional capacity [through whatever local and central 
institutions may be convenient]." In other words 
the completion of adult education means the com- 
pletion and perfection of the general system of 
education of a land. 

III. IMMIGRATION AND HEREDITY. 

When the education of a people is made general 
in some such way, we may also look for a proper 
and maintained realization of the importance of 
hereditary and pre-natal influences in developing 
the races of the earth. Francis Galton,^ who has 
made a study of the subject, estimates that in a 
scale of races laid down and adopted by him, the 
Anglo-Saxon race is two degrees higher than the 
Negro, and that the Athenian or Greek race was 
two degrees higher in intellectual power than the 
present Anglo-Saxon. This great superiority of 
the Athenian race he regards as largely due to 
conditions and laws that attracted the pick and 
cream of the Greek colonies to Athens for a period. 
The after sudden falling off of this race he regards 
as largely due to the immigration of great num- 
bers of inferior peoples to Athens, attracted by the 
material prosperity of the capital. If this is so, 



160 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

we have here a vivid picture of how much may be 
gained and how much lost by rightly or wrongly 
governing the mingling of races and families. It 
suggests that the noble stock begotten in America 
by the combinationed union of Puritan, Cavalier, 
Scotch-Irish and Huguenot colonists, and to which 
the world owes so much for its freedom and en- 
lightenment, may as suddenly deteriorate as did 
the Athenian race, under a vaster immigration of 
inferior peoples, attracted by the greater material 
prosperity generated by our first greatness. It 
calls forcibly to mind the more general fact that na- 
ture has profound and far-reaching laws governing 
not only the mingling of races, but also the result 
of individual marriages, that there are pre-natal in- 
fluences which affect and go far to wreck or richly 
endow at the outset each individual life. The im- 
portance of these facts Horace Bushnell has elo- 
quently pointed out in his book on " Christian 
Nurture." Yet they have been strangely disre- 
garded in the past. In public affairs '^ not more 
than two or three law-givers have ever made the 
ennobling of their stock a subject of practical atten- 
tion." And in private life the neglect has been 
almost equally great. Impulse has not been made 
to yield to knowledge and wisdom. A source of 
hope for the future lies in a general and maintained 
education of the people. 

When parents are educated in this matter, and 
appreciate its importance sufficiently to carefully 
regard and cherish every pre-natal influence that 



ADULT EDUCATION, 161 

shall endow the child with health, purity, and in- 
telligence, when they shall at the same time as 
carefully guard it from every sudden wrecking, or 
insidiously destructive influence ; when parents 
shall have learned the importance and the methods 
pf repressing every hurtful hereditary tendency, 
and cherishing every valuable one both in them- 
selves and their off-spring, when, as a body, the 
people have learned to appreciate the immense re- 
sults that may accrue from the right mingling of 
races, then may we expect individual and general 
actions in these matters. 

If the general education of the people is relig- 
ious, their attention to this matter will be more 
conscientious, swift and effective. Religious par- 
ents have the most far-reaching conception of the 
value of a child born to them as sacred in a mani- 
fold way. It is sacred as being born to an unend- 
ing existence ; as possessing powers and germs of 
influence for good and evil that are unlimited ; as 
sacred in the eye of God. Hence races truly relig- 
ious, like the Hebrew and German, have had the 
deepest and truest family life. No one has equal 
motives with such parents to search outfall the 
laws which affect life and the soul's welfare in all 
their incipiencies ; to determine streams of ancestral 
influence and govern and adapt them. They will 
strive in every way that their children be born 
near the kingdom of God. 

In general, in order that adult education duly 
perform its function, it should be religious in spirit 
11 



162 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

and have a distinct religious element. Otherwise 
it may become a mere fad or dilettante amusement. 
Religion reveals a moral and spiritual value in all 
knowledge as affecting conduct and developing 
blessedness. It keeps in mind the vast needs of 
the world, its contracted lives, and . positive mis- 
eries. It carries adult education into practice and 
makes it effective for good, and thus keeps it devel- 
oping without pause- 

THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN ADULT EDUCATION. 

Religion is also an aid in the process of adult 
education w^here such help is the most needed. 
When the mind has become matured and fixed, ex- 
pansion is difficult. Here the supreme expansive 
force, which we have shown religious ideas to pos- 
sess, does invaluable service. When working with- 
out the full aid of a teacher, it is difficult for many 
to maintain a high standard of work. When work- 
ing alone to attain accuracy and a thorough organ- 
ization of the faculties, requires the emplo3^ment 
of every resource of will power. Here again a 
conscientious spirit is an invaluable aid. 

Religion for its own sake also urges the full de- 
velopment of adult education. Thus only can re- 
ligion complete itself and its details, in action and 
in blessedness. The needs of the world change 
from generation to generation, from year to 3^ear 
even. Some disappear in reality though remaining 
in form. New ones appear in hidden ways. The 
methods by which best to meet the ^eeds of the 



AIKJLT EDUCATION. 163 

world, change with every new fact discovered and 
every new invention. It is only by constantly and 
systematically informing thenfselves that people 
can learn the real needs of the world, and the most 
fundamental and inclusive ways of meeting these. 
New moral facts, new sources of blessedness are 
also discovered from year to year. Only by adult 
study and self-improvement are those main prin- 
ciples of ethics and religion, which are ever the 
same, kept completed in an ever new fulness of 
detail and clothed in an ever new richness of con- 
crete expression. 

Hence it is full of interest to observe that the 
great popular religious movements of the age, as 
the Society for Christian Endeavor and the Ep- 
worth League, have educational or general culture 
elements ; and that on the other hand, adult edu- 
cation often has a distinct religious element, that 
the Chautauqua movement was born in a camp- 
meeting, that in University Extension Biblical 
study is one of the most popular courses, that 
Prof. Moulton's literary study and interpretative 
recitations of the Bible occup}^ a foremost place ; 
that along with the general development of adult 
education has arisen a vast Biblical literature. It 
argues much not only for the future of adult edu- 
cation, but for the general welfare of the world. 



CHAPTER YIIL 

THE USE OF BOOKS. 
THE WEALTH OF BOOKS. 

ACCORDING to Simon Newcomb it would take 
a good-sized printed book to contain merely 
the titles of those periodicals devoted to the publi- 
cation of original investigations, and containing 
really new additions to human knowledge, which 
have been published within the last three hundred 
years. Many of these single titles would stand 
for a series of two hundred or more volumes, each 
volume being full of more or less important ob- 
served facts, or the most profound deductive inves- 
tigations. 

The Index-catalogue of the Medical Library in 
the Surgeon-GeneraFs office at Washington, gives 
some adequate notion of how vast is the accumu- 
lation of facts in a single department of knowl- 
edge. The medical library of the United States 
Government is admittedly on the whole the best in 
the world. This catalogue of the titles of nearly 
all books and articles written on medical subjects, 
which may be taken as reasonably complete, will, 
when finished, fill thirteen volumes of about one 
thousand pages each. A single subject, as '^ the 
eye " occupies ninety-nine pages and has references 

(164) 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 165 

to nearly eight thousand books and articles. The 
total number of books and articles referred to in 
the entire Index, will not fall far short of half a 
million. This vast accumulation is increasing at a 
stupendous rate. The number of medical periodi- 
cals taken for the library in 1886, was three thous- 
and two hundred and seventy, an increase of two 
hundred and sixty-five over the preceding year. 

Even vaster is the aggregate of what is called 
general literature. Sixty thousand new books are 
published each year. Within the last thirty years 
our national literature has doubled itself. In this 
century every civilized country, all the smaller 
states of Europe, as well as the more recently 
civilized nations of the world, have each been form- 
ing an individual national literature. Holland has 
one, Norway has one, so have Denmark, Russia, 
South America and Japan. The general reader 
stands in the presence of foreign literatures as 
never before. Translations and criticism have 
organized these new and the older literatures into 
a great world's literature, which our printing 
presses pour out at our feet in a flood. 

THE PROBLEM. 

This cursory glance shows how vast is the uni- 
verse of facts and experience, and how important is 
the problem of the right use of books. This is quite 
as important as learning the art of personal obser- 
vation. Personal investigation and re-discovery 
of even a small part of existing knowledge is im- 



166 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

possible. If life is to be made reasonably com- 
plete, nine-tenths of the knowledge obtained by 
each one, beyond the livelihood horizon, must be 
got through the printed page. The fraction of di- 
rectly gained knowledge has a greater value in en- 
abling one rightly to interpret books than in its 
own immediate use. Yet notwithstanding the 
great importance of this problem, many, perhaps 
the great majority, fail of an adequate solution of 
it. 

In the midst of such wealth, more than one is 
overcome with bewilderment, and even with a more 
or less complete despair. Some come to wander 
about as in a great wilderness, gathering pleasure 
and benefit only in a partial and spasmodic way. 
If they go into what is called active life, where 
they must have to do with affairs rather than books, 
they come to a state where they occasionally 
merely read the newest book, or where, if they have 
eagerness, they rush about like a child amid limit- 
less flowers and butterflies, dropping one handful 
of blossoms to gather another, or throwing all aside 
to chase a new butterfly. 

On the other hand, some, attempting to assimi- 
late the entire mass, are enslaved by books. Books 
cease to be suggestors and become dictators. The 
culture of the man is no longer an inward growth 
ever fed by the essential messages which books 
bring, but only a lifeless heap of leaves thrown 
together and growing only as additional leaves are 
torn out of books and thrown upon it. Many who 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 167 

must always have to do with books and live in and 
by them, have their blood changed into ink, their 
flesh into paper, their bones into pasteboard, their 
skin into calf and morocco. They become books 
plus the power of motion. 

The wise teacher realizing that he can not hope 
personally and directly to lead a pupil through 
more than a fraction of any department of knowl- 
edge or literature, strives to give him a method, 
and then an inclination and a power, to roam and 
master extensively for himself Realizing the 
dangers as well as the privileges of the general 
reader, he strives to give each learner such a 
method that he shall always retain a broad and 
nutritive mastery over printed literature. Some 
features, at least, of this method are evident. 

I. THE GREAT BOOK. 

Alike in professional and general reading, it is 
more important each year that we go at once to the 
great books, and that as early as possible the 
young mind learn to love and use them. The 
more numerous books become, the more valuable 
are the great, inclusive ones. *' There are books 
which take rank in our lives, with parents and 
lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so 
stringent, so revolutionary, so authentic are thej^'^ 
We must pass by (at least for the time being) the 
partial books, the imperfect, the secondary, the 
echoes, and go at once to these, the complete and 
perfect books. We must pass over minor litera- 



168 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

ture, that which is current and transitory, the 
hasty, superficial and frothy, and go to those books 
which have come to the top with great emphasis in 
our day, or which living down through the past, 
and surviving the shocks of centuries and the 
deaths of civilizations^ have won for themselves a 
permanent place in the heart of the human family. 
It is more and more useless to try to read all 
books. As Holmes has said, we might as well try 
to race with a locomotive as with the modern print- 
ing press. One can shake hands and say a word 
to every one he meets along a country road but not 
in a city. Literature was once like the country 
but is now like a metropolis. But if we go at 
once to the great books and master them, we shall 
in a measure be masters of all other books. If we 
have seen Niagara, we have seen the essence of all 
cataracts. If we have seen the big trees of Cali- 
fornia, we do not need to go to visit smaller trees. 
If we have been in a storm at sea, no other storm 
can teach us much. If we have heard Webster or 
Demosthenes, we have heard the best that any 
orator can say. When we are masters of Milton 
and Browning, a few glances will give us all that 
we need from a lesser poet. Great books are like 
great cities. As London contains more Irishmen 
than Dublin, and more Scotchmen than Edinburgh, 
and more Jews than Palestine, so Shakspeare con- 
tains more of lyric beauty than Shelly, more of 
historic interest than Scott, more knowledge of the 
human heart than Browning, though these, toOjare 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 169 

great. When we are masters of a book that has 
been the seed of a new literature^ we are masters 
largely of that literature, and more broadly when 
we are masters of the book that has been the seed 
of a new civilization, we are masters of that civil- 
ization. 

When we know the great, inclnsive books there- 
fore we can be largely careless to what extent we 
read the smaller, the derived books. If ever we 
have time, we can gather from them mnch of value, 
many supplementary scraps, items, details, — but 
we can for many purposes be careless whether we 
read all of minor literature or not. The more the 
world grows, the more do its great books contain, 
the more do they tower up into distinct, superior 
importance. 

But beyond dispute the greatest of all books is 
the Bible. Each 3^ear this book towers up more 
emphatically into supreme importance. The more 
sin and evil accumulate as a present fact or as a 
record, the more valuable do the great remedial 
principles in this book become. As the details of 
life increase and become multitudinous, the import- 
ance of the general principles in the Bible in- 
creases. Whatever adds to the sweetness or bril- 
liancy or blessedness of life adds to the value of the 
Bible, for in this book we find the means of attain- 
ing complete and enduring life. As books increase, 
therefore, the more the Bible should be read and 
made the center and essence of life. 



170 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

II, SEARCHING OUT THE ESSENCE. 

In the use of books it is also increasingly neces- 
sary to be able swiftly to search out the essence of 
each, to reject the false and superfluous, but to get 
at and retain the essential idea, that which includes 
or suggests the rest. The masterly reader thinks 
through a book, above it, below it, around it. He 
doubts it, questions it, pulverizes it. As the e3^e 
runs down the page, the mind sa^^s this is so, and 
this is not so. These pages are words, words, 
words ; this half page is full of suggestion. There 
has been built up within him a fierce, relentless 
logic, which by a few flashes can dissolve the vital 
message of a book away from the rest of its con- 
tents ; which can often penetrate into the distant 
and unread part of a book, detect the vital mes- 
sage there and draw it forth. 

Having thus learned to dissolve the book, what 
he does not need he rejects more peremptoril}^ than 
ever before. When Lord Nelson received sensible 
instructions from the ministers at home, he read 
them with his good eye. When he received absurd 
instructions he read them with his glass eye. The 
masterly reader treats the messages of books in 
the same way. In the greatest books he finds 
much that he does not need. As Emerson has 
pointed out, the perfect poet has not yet been. 
Milton is too learned, while Homer sticks too close 
to common life. In Shakspeare are found, not in- 
frequently, mixed and strained metaphors, some- 
times weak and insufficient motive in the charac- 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 171 

ters portrayed, and humor that is either obsolete, 
or gross and vulgar. Walter Scott's novels are 
often inexpressibly tedious to the quick-witted 
American, who can gather in a chapter at a glance. 
Thackeray is full of cynical moralizing. Dickens 
is in places maudlin and sensational. Large por- 
tions of the works of these great writers have be- 
come useless to this age. Many pages and chap- 
ters of the greatest books are continually drifting 
out of the world's life and thought, and in some 
books that were once all needful to mankind only 
here a necessary passage and there a necessary line 
are left. All else he peremptorily rejects. 

One of the means of determining the true mean- 
ing of a book has already been indicated. It is 
to have done for one's self some personal, concrete 
work ; to be carrying on processes of discover}^ and 
construction in some department of life, however 
small. When such a person is a reader, from his 
own experience he knows what a book is and what 
it is not. He sees what is being elaborated and 
condensed in one, and what is the goal and inclusive 
point of the condensation. In time he learns how 
truly literature resembles vegetation and other 
forms of life, and how one noble form of the 
present often includes many predecessors and con- 
temporaries. 

But bej^ond this and all other similar methods, 
the altruistic spirit and religious ideas have a func- 
tion here also. The truest essence of a book is the 
divine or spiritual essence. The broadest base-line 



172 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

from which to measure a book, is the religious base- 
line. To select what is related to life, the present 
and future welfare of the people and the general 
good of the world, this gives the best mastery of a 
book. Again and again it has been illustrated that 
where others find an indefinite tangle, a simple 
Christian faith finds a clear, direct path. In the 
mazes of speculation and the increasing wilderness 
of facts, this faith is an ever more valuable guide. 
An intense, religious interest in life, enables us to 
discriminate and extract the essence of literature 
in the best way. 

III. ASSIMILATION OF THE ESSENCE. 

In the use of books, it is also increasingly im- 
portant to employ every means of swift but 
thorough assimilation of their essential ideas. It 
is not diflScult to point out some of the more 
obvious of these means. In reading, as in study, 
modern education teaches us to begin with the 
simple, concrete, narrative masterpieces, and learn 
from them till the developed taste can appreciate 
the complex, the abstract, the philosophicaL There 
are complexities in literature beyond the power of 
the beginner to enjoy, however they may thrill 
with delight the critic whose taste has been ex- 
tending and completing itself for fifty years. There 
are touches of nature beyond a limited experience 
to appreciate. It is fatal to labor with books con- 
taining these, till by a repeated exercise of the 
sense of duty and the sense of shame, we persuade 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 173 

ourselves that we enjoy what we really do not 
understand. More than one busy young preacher 
in takmg up literature in his first leisure, has be- 
gun with Milton's Paradise Lost, largely attracted 
perhaps by the nature of the subject, and has had 
ever after a secret dyspepsia for all poetry. Per- 
haps there is no element in the entire range of 
poetry, which it requires a more profound poetic 
taste to appreciate, than the peculiar grandeur of 
the speeches of the lost angels. To the beginner, 
these speeches, filling page after page, are tedious 
beyond all language. But let him read first the 
simple poets, Longfellow and Burns, then Tenny- 
son and Gra}^, and afterward Shakspeare and 
Homer. These mastered, Milton will afibrd a new 
and perhaps profounder pleasure than anything 
that has preceded, and Milton's Satan will appear 
one of the sublimest figures that ever battled 
against hopeless adversity. 

Again, many will find their powers of assimi- 
lation growing more rapidly, if they begin by read- 
ing those master-pieces suited to one in their 
peculiar circumstances. A boy of fourteen sees 
somewhere that, as a piece of humor, Don Quixote 
has no superior in all literature. He tries to read 
it but finds nothing amusing in it, onl}^ a string of 
rather dull adventures. An old knight falling in 
love with a Dulcinea and riding out to do exploits 
in her honor and tilting with his lance at a wind- 
mill, what can there be comical in that to a boy 
who himself, perhaps, in shy imagination pays 



174 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

worship to some fair girl friend *as a princess, and 
who has a fort back in the woods, and hunts with 
bow and arrow around through the bushes after 
Indians ? But the same boy on reading Scott's 
novel, Guy Mannering, is greatly amused when he 
comes to Dominie Sampson. That a man could be 
so absorbed in his studies that he could not tell 
when his clothes wore out, so absorbed that when 
his friends substituted new garments, he could only 
dimly remark a few days later that the change of 
weather seemed to be agreeing with his clothes, 
that any man could care so much for study and 
so little for concrete life as all that, is hugely 
comical. The city boy will assimilate what the 
country boy will not. The editor will find a 
nutritive delight in what the business man finds 
distasteful. Let each begin where his nature feels 
delight, and new power will come. 

More valuable than either of these means per- 
haps, is to cultivate one's faculty of entering per- 
sonally into the matter of a book, the dramatic 
faculty with reference to the printed page. All 
have heard of how Macaulay read, how he often 
might be seen in his lifetime threading his way 
through the crowds of London streets, open book 
in hand, altogether oblivious of his surroundings, 
with tears streaming down his face as he read some 
story like the parting of Hector and Andromache. 
All have read how Coleridge when a young man, 
after reading the story of Hero and Leander, went 
walking down a London street swinging out his 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 175 

arms horizontally with much force in swimming 
fashion, dreaming that he too was making his way 
across the Hellespont^ and oblivious of whom he 
struck. 

When reading thus there is no yeil of symbols 
between us and the truth. The whole brain is as 
sensitive as a retina. The printed characters smite 
it with aggressive force and find in it an answering 
sensitiveness. The whole book stands up as one 
mighty picture and is read. Assimilation is not 
effort. We do not think. The book thinks itself 
into us, throbs and palpitates its vital message into 
our inmost being. It is person touching person. 

This is a power most needed in this overwhelm- 
ing, material, unidealistic age. It can be cultivated 
by reading vivid books, those full of details like 
Defoe's, or Boswell's Life of Johnson. It can be 
cultivated by self-surrender to the emotions aroused 
by books. When the reader feels a good book stir- 
ring him, he can give way to the excitement. He 
can suffer the feelings aroused to rock him to and fro. 
Such surrender to a book is its highest mastery. 
Every tear shed over a printed tragedy is a j^recious 
jewel. Man sins when he does not cherish those 
rare and exalted moods in which the past and dis- 
tant, and the beings inhabiting them stand actually 
before him. 

But the deepest interest which a book can arouse 
is a religious interest. A true altruistic spirit 
should give a keener sense of personal relations to 
its matter and characters, than anything else. A 



176 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

religious interest and an altruistic spirit together 
should create the most vivid picture, arouse the 
most nutritive delight, and cause the most swift 
and thorough assimilation. 

THE princess' QUEST. 

In the Arabian ^Nights we read of a princess 
who, having heard of three wonderful objects, a 
talking bird that could reason, a singing tree every 
leaf of which made delicious music, and a yellow 
water which when put in a dish could rise of itself 
and form a cooling fountain twenty feet high, was 
pining away with longing to possess them. In 
order to gratify her, her two brothers, having dis- 
covered after long search the hill on which these 
objects were, proceeded in turn to ascend it. A 
host of demons gathered behind them, and shouted 
threats and insults. On turning about to face 
these demons, they were turned into stones as had 
been the fate of multitudes of others before them 
in making the same attempt. The sister, more 
unhappy than ever, resolved to attempt the achieve- 
ment l^^rself, and what manly strength and cour- 
age had failed to do, feminine ingenuity succeeded 
in accomplishing. For putting some wax in her 
ears, she safely reached the top of the hill, and 
there possessed herself of the three treasures. The 
talking bird told her that if she would sprinkle 
some of the yellow water on the stones on the hill- 
side, they would all change back into men. Under 
the magic touch, up sprang princes in full armor, 



THE USE OF BOOKS. 177 

the brave and handsome of manj- ages, and among 
them to her infinite delight her lost brothers. The 
final scene has a chief meaning to us here. The 
hillside covered with stones is a bookcase full of 
books. The princess sprinkling water on the en- 
chanted stones and causing them to spring up 
living men and brothers, is that facultj^ of man, 
part of the divine breath breathed into him at the 
beginning, a spiritual imagination, which changes 
books from lumps of matter to breathing, thinking, 
human beings. It causes the fraternal essence of 
printed fact and story to stand out alive, and ena- 
bles us to clasp it to ourselves in a tie as of one 
blood and one soul, and to face the world with a 
fuller creative power. 

12 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE TEACHER. 
THREE GREAT SYSTEMS. 

CONDITIONS and aims being understood, the 
three most effective systems of education prob- 
ably, that the world has ever seen are the Jewish, 
Jesuit and German systems. Other schools have 
produced broader results, and other systems have 
had greater single features, but none have excelled 
these three in the thoroughness and endurance 
which characterize the immediate results aimed at 
and attained. It is noticeable that in each of these 
systems the teacher is the primary object of atten- 
tion. 

I. THE TEACHER IN THE JEWISH SYSTEM. 

Among the Jews teachers were accorded extra- 
ordinary honor. They are called^ "^ those true guard- 
ians of the city." " If your teacher and your 
father," says the Talmud, '' have need of your 
assistance, help your teacher before helping your 
father, for the latter has given you only the life of 
this world, while the former has secured for you 
the life of the world to come." " Each scribe out- 
weighs all the common people," says the Mishna. 
" To supply a learned man with the means of gain- 

(178) 



THE TEACHER. 179 

ing money in trade would procure a high place in 
heaven." Sages were to be saluted as kings, and 
in some respects had the priority of kings. It was 
not lawful to sit down to eat with an unlettered 
man, but was lawful with a heretic or Samaritan 
provided he were learned. 

The Jew made it a duty of the parent to instruct 
his children. We might almost say that the father 
was exalted into a teacher. ^' The father was 
' bound to teach his son.' To impart to the child 
knowledge of the Torah, conferred as great spiritual 
distinction as if a man had received the Law itself 
on Mount Horeb. Every other engagement, even 
the necessary meal should give place to this para- 
mount duty." 

Teachers thus supremely honored and doing their 
work with proportionate zeal, and parents thus 
made into teachers, have produced extraordinary 
results. " If ever a people has demonstrated the 
power of education, it is the people of Israel." 
'' What a singular spectacle is offered to us b}^ that 
people which, dispossessed of its own country for 
eighteen hundred years, has been despised among 
the nations without losing its identity, and has 
maintained its existence without a country, without 
a government, and without a ruler, preserving 
with perennial energy its habits, its manners, and 
its faith." 

n. IN THE JESUIT SYSTEM. 

As is well known the order of the Jesuits was 



180 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

founded with the first purpose of sta3dng the prog- 
ress of the Reformation. Luther and Colet fostered 
education and used it as a means to aid in spreading 
and establishing the new religious ideas. Loyola 
endeavored to use the same weapon, even more ef- 
fectively if possible, to check the advance of the 
Reformation and undo its work. Out of his efforts 
arose that remarkable system of education, which 
seized the gifted minds of two-thirds of Europe and 
used them to blind and stifle its development for 
many centuries. It has been called " the greatest 
pedagogical sj^stem the ancient or the modern 
world has ever seen." 

In it the chief stress and aim were directed to- 
ward the most thorough possible development of the 
teacher. Thirteen years of preparation were given 
to the training of each instructor. It was a maxim 
with the Jesuits that " a poor teacher will never 
produce a good pupil ; and in the hands of an in- 
competent master the best of pupils become irre- 
deemably perverted." In fact pedagogy as a 
science and our sj^stem of normal collegeB origin- 
ated with these cunning priests directly, but in- 
directly, as we have seen they are due to the Refor- 
mation. 

III. IN THE GERMAN SYSTEM. 

In like manner among the Germans we find 
the maxim " the teacher is the school." Teaching 
is as distinct a profession as the practice of medi- 
cine. A person is no more allowed to make the 



:^ THE TEACHER. 181 

one a makeshift occupation than the other. The 
official act of a teacher is no more questioned than 
the act of a physician. Teachers have many 
special privileges.. When they retire, they receive 
pensions in proportion to their years of service. 
" The teaching profession in Germany has become 
a pride of the nation." Leading educators, men 
like Helmholtz and Yirchow, are as much an object 
of national esteem, and receive as high honors as 
statesmen like Bismarck and generals like Yon 
Moltke. The present emperor has appointed Prof. 
Helmholtz a member of his Privy Council announc- 
ing the appointment in a highly laudatory tele- 
gram. The recent celebration of Prof. Yirchow's 
seventieth birthday ^ equals in distiuction and dig- 
nity an}'' accorded to a public man below the em- 
peror himself. '^ The entire nation associated itself 
with the scientific societies in doing honor to the 
illustrious investigator of whose achievements it 
has for many a day been so justly proud." ^' The 
occasion was regarded as one of national impor- 
tance." '^ In the morning, congratulations were 
offered to him in the large hall of the Kaiserhof 
Hotel, Berlin. . . . On a long table were in- 
numerable presents, medals, diplomas, and ad- 
dresses. Short speeches were delivered on behalf 
of a series of deputations, the first of which was 
headed by Dr. Bartsch, one of the chief officials of 

the ministry Dr. Yon Forckenbeck, the 

Burgomaster of Berlin, heading a deputation from 
the Municipality of the capital, presented Prof. 



182 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATIOK. 

Yirchow with the freedom of the city In 

the afternoon a second meeting was held in the 
large hall of the Pathological Institute, where as 
the Berlin correspondent of the \^London'] Times 
says, ' an almost endless procession of learned bodies 
and other corporations, presenting gifts and ad- 
dresses, defiled before Prof. Yirchow.' .... More 
speeches were delivered in the evening when a re- 
union ... of his friends and admirers was held." 
Bismarck may have been honored in a more sensa- 
tional way, but never with more dignity or a greater 
completeness. The German educational system, 
of which the teacher is thus the heart, is, as all 
know, in many respects the leading one in the 
world. 

A FUNDAMENTAL AND DIFFICULT PROBLEM. 

Hence we find much in these three systems to 
justify the statement made by President Garfield, 
which has been widely noticed, but which cannot be 
quoted too often. ^' If I could be taken back into 
boyhood to-day, and had all the libraries and ap- 
paratus of a university, with ordinary routine pro- 
fessors, offered me on the one hand, and on the 
other, a great luminous, rich-souled man, such as 
Mark Hopkins was twenty years ago, in a tent in 
the woods alone, I should say ' Give me Mark 
Hopkins for m}^ college course, rather than any 
university with only routine professors.' " The 
most important problem in any system of educa- 
tion is to get the right kind of teachers. The 



THE TEACHER. 183 

noblest and amplest buildings ^ the fullest abund- 
ance of the best apparatus, the best possible text 
books and libraries, all these are important, but as 
the Jesuits keenly saw, a poor teacher nullifies 
them all, while a good teacher makes a university 
of books and apparatus out of the great world it- 
self 

Not only is the creation of teachers the most 
fundamental problem in the art of education, it is 
also perhaps the most difficult. Taking existing 
systems of education, how many instructors are in 
any sense adequate masters of them? Let the 
mind of each reader run back to the teachers he 
has had, and count up those that have had an}^ truly 
developing effect upon him. The writer was a 
pupil of seven different teachers in the public 
schools, and but one of these was really stimulat- 
ing ; in private schools, he was under the instruc- 
tion of seven others and two of these were truly 
efficient ; in higher schools he studied under about 
thirty different men and of these five or^six were 
found in some degree stimulating, while in the 
whole list but three or four really had power to 
bring the mind out and give it grasp of life and 
efficient methods. Thus of these instructors about 
one in five or six seemed to be the proportion of 
reasonably efficient ones. If such is the case in 
established systems of education, it is easy to see 
that in any advance of our methods, it is still more 
true that the most important and difficult point is 
to get the right sort of teachers. As Milton says 



184 A NEW LIFE IN EBUCATIGK. 

of a proposed new method of education '^ Only I 
believe that this is not a bow for every man to 
shoot who counts himself a teacher, but will re- 
quire sinews almost equal to those which Homer 
gave Ulysses/' 

Not only is the making of good teachers a most 
fundamental problem now and always, but also 
in the future it will be an increasingly difficult 
problem. As the world life increases in com- 
plexity and richness and a larger amount is to be 
learned in a short time^ and fuller powers are to be 
acquired in sure, specifically, scientifically organ- 
ized ways, the functions of the teacher increase in 
difficulty and importance. The more comprehen- 
sive and precise and delicate methods are, the more 
expanded and accurate must be the mind that uses 
them. The more we have of self acting, mechanical 
principles even, the more of surrounding adjust- 
ments are to be made. The sphere of mechanical 
action is surrounded by a larger sphere of rational 
manipulation and emotional interest. More mis- 
takes are to be foreseen and avoided, more local 
diversities are to be utilized. More grasp, more 
vigor, more enthusiasm are called for. Better me- 
chanical ai3pliances must be matched by an in- 
tenser, more creative living soul to make all truly 
effective. Every advance in educational method 
makes a need for a still better teacher to apply it. 

A growing appreciation of the fundamental 
place of the teacher in systems of education, is 
jjiown in the great increase in normal colleges in 



THE TEACHEE. 185 

all lands where there is educational activity ^ by the 
large amount of experimentation that is being 
made and literature that is being written bearing on 
the education of teachers. Pedagogical instruction 
is the main purpose of a large number of summer 
schools. It is a department of instruction in lead- 
ing universities. It is being recognized as an im- 
portant part of a liberal education. Public and 
private effort alike are doing their best to solve the 
problem of making better teachers. The state es- 
tablishes schools for the purpose. Voluntary effort 
as in the New York College for the Training of 
Teachers, does the same. Some men desiring to 
advance education give their money not for extend- 
ing the application of present methods, but for their 
improvement or for the discover}^ of better ones. 

I. DRAMATIC POWER. 

Some of the characteristics which go to make up 
the needed teacher, and some of the methods by 
which to obtain these, are gradually becoming clear 
and working their way into practice. In particu- 
lar every method is being devised and insisted upon 
to enable the teacher to understand the young and 
growing mind of the pupil. That the instructor 
should do this, is realized more emphatically each 
year as the basis of all good teaching. The needs 
and processes of the growing mind being exactly 
and fully understood, means of aiding it to the best 
advantage will come with time and experience. 

But first of all the teacher must possess this dra- 



186 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

matic power to put himself in the pupil's place. 
He must be able to shrink his mind and make it 
j^oung and crude again, and then make it grow as 
it should. He is not simply to understand and be 
able to look at a boy's mind from the outside and 
correctly state and explain its working ; the dra- 
matic instinct is to be cultivated till it is in time 
an irresistible instinct, the soul of the teacher for 
the time, being transformed into the soul of the 
boy, and easily but intensely looking out on the 
world as the child does. He is to possess not 
merely a mechanical, but a personal, s^^mpathetic 
knowledge of the minds and souls in his care. The 
poor teacher thinks that every process in a stu- 
dent's mind which he is not familiar with, is un- 
sound. If a pupil demonstrates a proposition in 
geometry in a way new to him, he is alarmed, not 
gratified. If a child says ^^ south and north " he 
corrects him into saying '' north and south." He 
does not understand what extravagances, follies, 
skepticisms will pass away of themselves, if but 
the better part of the young mind be properly 
stimulated. If he had his way, all boys would be 
of the same height, weight, color, clothed alike, 
and of the same abilities. He tries to compress 
and carve down each soul under his care to fit a lit- 
tle harness possessed by him which he would like 
to see in universal use. 

But the teacher who rightly apprehends his work 
in the world, realizes to some extent the vast, num- 
ber of ways in which even the simplest thing can 



THE TEACHEE. 187 

be done, the vast diversity of attitudes and proc- 
esses in different minds, and carefully studies each, 
so as to realize it the better and stimulate it into 
higher activity and more productive originality. 
Some of the most successful teachers the writer 
knows, spend hours in trying to realize exactly the 
minds of his pupils, in following up clues, in un- 
ravelling and constructing their consciousnesses 
from hints gathered in the class room, till he can 
feel and see like them. Especially does he try to 
realize the elements of good power in them, and de- 
vise ways of stimulating and giving these powers a 
broader field of exercise. Every day he is sur- 
prised at some extraordinary misconception on their 
part which he had not dreamed of as possible. 
Each day some new original way of looking at 
things, and variation from standard methods, gives 
him a clue to a new important method of presenta- 
tion, and one that sometimes leads to a new truth. 
He learns that one student is a parasite, feeding on 
the teacher for all his nervous energy. He learns 
that another has the habit of asking sage questions, 
while doing very little real work. He learns that 
another, beneath an unpromising exterior, has some 
unusual ability. He comes to prize every difficulty 
met with and every odd turn of expression used, 
as giving a clue to new i^rocesses of mind or inves- 
tigation. 

II. THE TEACHER A STUDENT. 

In the performance of his work, the earnest 



188 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

teacher also learns the value of himself studying 
something new all the time. Thomas Arnold said 
" I hold that a man is only fit to teach so long as 
he is himself learning daily." The experience of 
every teacher who has tried it bears out the asser- 
tion. To instruct others aright, the teacher's life 
must be '' a constant progress of self-education." 
If he not only study but also recite directly and 
specifically to some one, just as his pupils do to 
him, he will make his work that much more profit- 
able. Thus most forcibly will he realize the ad- 
vantage the teacher has when asking a question, in 
that he has the whole subject complete in his mind 
while directing a question on a certain point, 
whereas the pupil has many imperfectly grasped 
and scattered points in mind and knows not which 
of several the question relates to. It gives more 
effectually than any other exercise the dramatic 
power, the ability to put himself in the pupil's 
place. It is a uniform experience with teachers, 
that those who have themselves once taught, make 
the best pupils. It is equally true that those who 
are themselves pupils, make the best teachers. 

III. EXPERIMENTATION. 

Another way in which a teacher can cultivate 
this dramatic power as well as his general efficiency 
as a teacher, and perhaps make important discov- 
eries which will help others, is to make constant 
and systematic though judiciously limited experi- 
mentation a part of his pedagogical methods. 



THE TEACHER. 189 

While holding to established custom in the main, it 
is profitable also to have some line of tentative in- 
vestigation. This is one of the best means of con- 
tinuing the self-development of the teacher. It is 
the only correct way of assimilating the methods 
of others. The best powers of assimilation of 
knowledge and method both, are those which work 
in conjunction with investigation and discovery. 
An element of experimentation gives life and vigor 
to work both for pupil and teacher. Each instruc- 
tor, child, place, countrj^, age, has peculiarities 
which can be made the sources of new power if 
used aright. By experiment the teacher discovers 
at least some of these diversities and is enabled to 
utilize them. The American practical business 
spirit has just begun to tell in the intellectual 
world in general, and in pedagogics in particular. 
In text-books on Geometry it has introduced sim- 
plifications, diminishing perhaps by one-half the 
labor of teaching the subject. Much work of the 
same and a higher sort remains to be done. 

For instance, the question has arisen whether a 
savings bank feature can profitably be made a part 
of our schools.^ Wherever it has been tried in this 
country it has aroused enthusiasm and been con- 
tinued. It is claimed that a savings bank in con- 
nection with a school teaches early the value and 
use of money ; it creates habits of self restraint and 
discrimination in doing without unnecessary things ; 
it arouses the parents to save and gives them a 
new interest in schools ; it makes the school room 



190 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

attractive to dull children ; it teaches the children 
to be generous but wisely so, as was exemplified in 
June 1889, by the children of Long Island City in 
voluntarily subscribing over $450 from their penny 
savings "' to alleviate the sufferings of their brother 
and sister scholars," who lost parents and home in 
the Johnstown flood. There can be no question 
that we yet teach too much " as if the mediaeval 
world were still about us." Perhaps in these banks 
we may have one way of taking the world as it is, 
teaching its best practical wisdom, but teaching it 
in connection with a higher culture, and a broader 
altruism and thus rising from the actual material 
basis of things to a higher idealism. Experiment 
only can decide the question. IsTot only in relation 
to such large educational movements is there room 
for experiment, but also in connection with every 
smaller subject and every detail of every subject. 

IV. A TEACHING ERA. 

Better teachers can also be made by cultivating 
the power and spirit of instruction generally among 
the people. As was pointed out in the first chap- 
ter, as the world life advances, men must learn and 
teach more and better, every day, in all lines of 
work and enjoyment. The health and happiness 
of the home depend largely on the ability of the 
mother to teach servants and children. Every man 
in the business world from the clerk, to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury is a teacher or a learner. 
Business life is a maze of informal, unconscious 



THE TEACHEE. • 191 

education. The labor and capital question would 
be largely settled, if both laborer and capitalist 
could learn and teach better. The highest flights 
of the poet and orator, the creations of the artist 
are but a kind of transcendental teaching. The 
American people succeed because they can learn so 
rapidly and teach in informal wa^'S so well. Ful- 
ness and effectiveness of life are, to a great extent, 
proportional to this unconscious pedagogical ability. 
In fact a general knowledge of the principles of 
teaching and learning should be a part of all edu- 
cation. It would not only add practical power and 
happiness to all life ; it would go far to answer the 
question of how to make better professional teach- 
ers. Great men in large numbers in any depart- 
ment of work have been produced when the body 
of the people as a whole were interested in that 
kind of activity o The Hebrew people made the 
Hebrew Rabbis, because each one of the common 
people was more or less a Rabbi. The Athenian 
people made Greek art and philosophy because each 
person was more or less an artist and a philosopher. 
Roman citizenship made and unmade the Roman 
Empire. The people made Italian art and the 
Reformatio^. The cathedrals of the middle ages 
were built when the common people flocked in mul- 
titudes to aid with their labor. The ages of great 
preaching have been when men preached each to 
the other in conversation. The best way to create 
teachers is to convert the people into these, and thus 
make them appreciative of good work of this sort. 



192 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

The teacher will then no longer be an object 
apart, safe in his medisevalisms, and existing 
through a sluggish routine. He will be a live part 
of the general organism of the world. Instruction 
will not be intrusted to those who regard it as a 
mere makeshift in gaining a livelihood, or make it 
a stepping stone to something else. A poor teacher 
will be recognized as worse than none, as doing 
positive harm. One who can really stir the mind 
and profoundly affect for good the whole future life 
of a child, will be enthusiastically recognized as a 
benefactor to the whole community, however quietly 
his work be done. He will be recognized as great 
preachers and artists are, when they do a similar 
work in a more striking fashion. The work of 
teachers will be differentiated and all possible facil- 
ities will be given to those of each class. Those 
best fitted to aid children in assimilation will be 
allowed to do work of that kind. Those best 
fitted to stimulate and make original workers, will 
be given a chosen few pupils, in a laboratory or 
retired study where personal contact can tell to the 
utmost. Every aid that will enable a teacher to do 
his peculiar work with more vivacity and complete- 
ness and better reap its rewards, will be afforded. 
Thus, perhaps, a great teaching era will be created 
and will endure. 

THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT IN THE TEACHER. 

In all these ways, by the development of better 
training schools, by the direct culture of the dra- 



THE TEACHER. 193 

matic element, by constant and careful experiment, 
and by the general pedagogical culture of the peo- 
ple, better teachers may be produced. But thorough 
culture of the religious and altruistic nature can 
also be made a powerful aid in this work. A 
true religious spirit is of the highest value to the 
teacher, both in itself and in developing other needed 
characteristics. The work of the teacher is in its 
nature profoundly altruistic. He must work for 
the child in numerous ways which the child cannot 
understand or appreciate, and perhaps never will 
fully know. In his work there is room for the 
employment of any wealth of altruism. Patience, 
love, faith, conscientiousness, all in the highest 
degree, and the utmost sense of the sacredness of 
the soul and of the privilege of first storing it with 
truth and leading it out into higher life, are called 
for. The man with a loving heart and a religious 
spirit is already much of a teacher. He has those 
qualities which are fundamental and which will 
bring others. 

HINTS OF THIS SPIRIT. 

The altruistic spirit is the beginning and essence 
of the dramatic spirit. '' As ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye also to them likewise," com- 
pels a thorough understanding of others ; it is the 
basis of Christian conduct and of pedagogy alike. 
The man who has learned as a Christian the lesson, 
^' put yourself in his place," has learned the first 
essential lesson of the teacher. Indeed Christianity 

13 



194 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

carries the use of the dramatic element still further 
than we have indicated. By a sort of double use 
of it, the teacher is enabled to feel as the pupil does, 
and at the same time as does some great ideal 
character like Jesus. Then gradually, step by 
step, with patient labor and ardent love, he trans- 
forms the one into the other. 

Thus a great danger to which many teachers suc- 
cumb is avoided. Dealing continually with imma- 
ture minds, the instructor too often allows his own 
soul to shrink down till it merely surrounds the 
mind of the child. It loses robustness, manly 
breadth and vigor. But the soul of the teacher, 
who is realizing Christ's mind as well as that of the 
child, is enlarged and not dwarfed. Grasping the 
two simultaneously, it gains the widest range and 
swiftest command of that range. It is also bene- 
fitted in other ways. It makes instruction a 
method of preserving its youth and vivacity, and 
keeping these spread through its larger powers. 
Like the mother soul it can begin at the zero point 
with each new child, but instead of remaining there, 
grows up and out with the child into a new fulness 
of life and renews the soul's youth on a broader 
basis each year. 

If a teacher is to experiment, the most valuable 
way he can do so, is by trying to spiritualize all 
truth, by endeavoring to make explicit and power- 
ful in its action on the souls of students, that moral 
and spiritual essence which is in all knowledge. If 
he is to make religion a dominant agency in giving 



THE TEACHER. 195 

expansion and organization, lie must himself be 
full of the expansions and accuracies which the 
right religious spirit gives. In a word the teacher 
truly succeeds in proportion as he is full of the 
spirit of Jesus, when that spirit is viewed in its 
widest nature. 

It is worthy of note that in some of the countries 
where the most advanced educational systems exist, 
as in Germany and Sweden, instruction in religion 
is made a part of the course in Normal Colleges. 
In Sweden the teacher must have a certificate 
from the pastor of his parish showing that he has 
been confirmed and that he is of good moral 
character. His '' examination is especially severe 
in religious matters." The three most effective sys- 
tems of education, the Jewish, the Jesuit and the 
German, have not only made the teacher funda- 
mental, but have also made the moral and religious 
element in the training of the teacher the first. 

TWO GREAT TEACHERS. 

It is not less important to note the deeply al- 
truistic and often essentially religious nature of 
great individual teachers. Two of the greatest of 
these that ever lived were Pestalozzi and Thomas 
Arnold. Their natures and work were widelj^ dif- 
ferent in many respects, yet they were identical in 
these fundamental religious qualities and the effec- 
tiveness resulting therefrom. By their very diver- 
sity, taken together their cases make an illustra- 



196 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

tion so complete and vivid as to have the effect of a 
demonstration. 

PESTALOZZI. 

The Christ spirit was certainly the fundamental 
trait in Pestalozzi's character, it was the main- 
spring of his life. As a boy^ he went about with 
his grandfather visiting the sick and poor, and even 
then the desire '' to lessen the evil in the world began 
to grow strong. ' When I am a man,' he said, ' I 
will be a pastor like my grandfather.' At another 
time he said, ' When I am big, I shall support the 
peasants ; they ought to have the same rights as 
the townspeople.' " When he began to teach while 
living on his farm, he did so at great financial loss. 
A selfish financial element was nothing to him in 
his work. Like Jesus, he kept his pupils with 
him continually. He either taught them or worked 
with them in the fields and garden the wLole day. 
'' Pestalozzi always gave them the best potatoes in 
the dish and kept the worst for himself. ' I lived 
like a beggar,' he says, ' to teach beggars to live 
like men.' " 

The cost of his first experiment was so great 
that the farm had to be let for the benefit of 
creditors, and the children were sent away. " He 
and his family were without food, fuel or money, 
and often sufiered from cold and want. They still 
lived at Neubof, forsaken and scoflfed at by every- 
body. For thirty years, Pestalozzi's life, as he 
says himself, was a ' well nigh hopeless struggle 



THE TEACHER. 197 

with the most frightful poverty.' " ^' With the 
burning of Stanz by the French in 1^98 a new 
period began. It was then that he took charge of 
a number of orphan children in a dilapidated con- 
vent, and worked night and day watching over 
them. All of them were ragged, most of them 
were ignorant, many of them vicious. He says ' I 
was alone with them from morning till night. It 
was my hand that supplied their wants, both of 
body and soul. We wept and smiled together. 
We shared our food and drink. I had neither 
family, friends, nor servants — nothing but them. I 
was with them waking and sleeping, in sickness 
and in health. I was the last to go to bed, the 
first to get up. In the bed room I prayed with 
them, and at their own request taught them till 
they fell asleep. Their clothes and bodies were in- 
tolerably filthy, but I looked after both myself and 
was thus constantly exposed to the risk of con- 
tagion.' " 

He himself learned with them, and those that 
learned best were made helpers of each other. 
"' When the neighboring town of Altdorf burnt 
down, he gathered the children together and said, 
'Altdorf has been burnt down : perhaps at this 
very moment there are a hundred children there 
without home, food, or clothes. Will you not ask 
our good government to let twent}^ of them come 
and live with us ? ' They eagerly cried ' Yes ! 
yes ! ' 'But my children think of what you are ask- 
ing. Even now we have scarcely money enough. 



198 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

. . . You might have to work harder, and share 
your clothes with these children, and sometimes 
perhaps to go without food.' Yet still the answer 
was ' Yes, yes, we are quite ready to work harder, 
to eat less, to share our clothes, for we want them 
to come.' " 

Throughout his life it is clear that the Christ 
spirit was the fundamental trait in Pestalozzi's 
character. It is also clear that this was the prime 
source of his power as a teacher. It gave him an 
unexcelled dramatic power in realizing the minds 
of children. He and they were one. It enabled 
him to divine their needs and create a new method 
in education. From a hint dropped from one of 
them he developed his Object Lesson Method. It 
enabled him to develop the unselfish and religious 
natures of children, and to create in them an in- 
tense love of knowledge. It carried him on in 
self-development. He grew before and with them. 
It enabled him to use the real world about him and 
yet to ever rise to the loftiest idealism. 

THOMAS ARNOLD. 

One of the most successful teachers in all aspects 
of his work, whom the world has ever seen, was 
Thomas Arnold. The proportion of intellectually 
successful men among his pupils was great. Their 
success in Oxford and Cambridge was unprece- 
dented. The moral and religious and manhood re- 
sults of his work were such that at the universi- 
ties, his students formed a type known as Arnold's 



THE TEACHER. 199 

men. Fundamental in Iiis character and work was 
the ethical, the religious principle. He had an in- 
tense, Christlike sym]3athy with those whom he 
taught. Like Jesus he lived with them as con- 
stantly as possible. In giving advice to a pupil 
of his who is about to become a teacher, he writes,^ 
^' I should ssLjj have your pupils a good deal with 
you, and be as familiar with them as you possibly 
can. I did this continually more and more before 
I left Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping 
and [doing] all other gymnastic exercises within 
my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing with 
them. They, I believe, alwaj^s liked it, and I en- 
joyed it myself like a boy, and found myself con- 
stantly the better for it." One of his pupils says, 
'' Who that ever had the happiness of being at 
Laleham does not remember the lightness and joy- 
ousness of heart with which he would romp and 
play in the garden, or plunge with a hoj^s delight 
in the Thames; or the merry fun with which he 
would battle with spears with his pupils ? " In 
the evenings he also did his private work in their 
company. " It was only when we were all gath- 
ered up in the drawing-room after tea, amidst 
young men on all sides of him, that he would com- 
mence work for himself in writing his sermons or 
his Roman Histor}^" '^ ' He calls usfelloics,'^ was 
the astonished expression of the boys when, soon 
after his first coming [to Rugby], they heard him 
speak of them by the familiar name in use amongst 
themselves ; and in later years, they observed with 



200 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

pleasure the unaffected interest with which, in the 
long autumn afternoons, he would often stand in thei 
school-field and watch the issue of their favorite 
games." 

But this outward sympathy which led him to 
ever take such interest in their pla}^ and work 
alike, was but a particular expression of his inner 
spirit. The interest which he took in his pupils 
was first and inclusively a moral and religious in- 
terest. On one occasion he writes to a friend stat- 
ing that during the term three boys had died and 
four more had been at the point of death. ^' You 
may conceive how much anxiety and distress this 
must have occasioned us, yet I can most truly say 
that it is as nothing when compared with the ex- 
istence of any unusual moral evil in the school, 
far less distressing, far less harassing." '^ ^ If he 
should turn out ill,' " he said of a young boy of 
promise to one of his assistant-masters, and his 
voice trembled with emotion as he spoke, " ' I think 
it would break my heart.' " Nor were any thoughts 
so bitter to him, as those suggested by the in- 
nocent faces of little boys as they first came from 
home,— nor any expressions of his moral indigna- 
tion deeper, than when he heard of their being tor- 
mented or tempted into evil by their companions. 
" ' It is a most touching thing to me,' he said once 
in the hearing of one of his former pupils, on the 
mention of some new comers, ^ to receive a new 
fellow from his father — when I think what an in- 
fluence there is in this place for evil as well as for 



THE TEACHEK. 201 

good. I do not know anything that affects me 
more.' " 

'' The university honors T^hich his pupils ob- 
tained were very considerable, and at one time un- 
rivalled by any school in England, and he was un- 
feignedly delighted whenever they occurred. But 
he never laid any stress upon them, and strongly 
deprecated any system which would encourage the 
notion of their being the chief end to be answered 
by school education." Prizes and honors he men- 
tions only incidentally in his letters, while moral 
and religious matters he dwells on long and earn- 
estly. An increase in the number of pupils he 
values chiefly as showing the moral efficiency of 
the work of the school, and the esteem in which it 
is therefore held. 

In regard to his work at Rugby, he says, " It is 
my most earnest wish and I pray God that it may 
be my constant labor and prayer " to introduce a re- 
ligious principle into education. ^^ To do this would 
be ... a happiness so great that, I think, the 
world would yield me nothing comparable to it." 
^' The idea of a Christian school, again, was to him 
the natural result, so to speak, of the very idea of 
a school in itself. . . The intellectual training was 
not for a moment underrated . . but he looked upon 
the whole as bearing on the advancement of the one 
end of all instruction and education ; the boj^s were 
still treated as schoolboys, but as schoolboys who 
must grow up to be Christian men ; whose age did 
not prevent their faults from being sins, or their 



202 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

excellences from being noble and Christian virtues ; 
whose situation did not of itself make the applica- 
tion of Christian principles to their daily lives an 
impracticable vision." 

Religious and moral excellence was to him the 
aim and end of all education. He was fond of 
dwelling on the cross which rose from the top of 
the School Chapel as " a visible symbol " of Chris- 
tianity as the end and flower of education. 

A suggestive incident showing clearl}^ his views 
of education is that '' Lent was marked during his 
last three years, by the putting up of boxes in the 
chapel and the boarding houses, to receive money 
for the poor, a practice adopted not so mu-ch with 
the view of relieving an^ actual want, as of afford- 
ing the boys an opportunity of self-denial and 
almsgiving." It is interesting to compare this 
with the modern method of establishing savings 
banks in connection with schools. Most impres- 
sive of all is to read the words with which, when 
the chaplaincy of the school at Rugby became va- 
cant, he asks that he himself may be appointed to 
the post '' waiving, of course, altogether, the sal- 
ary attached to the office." ^' Whoever is chaplain 
I must ever feel myself, as head-master, the real 
and proper religious instructor of the boys. No 

one else can feel the same interest in them 

In fact it seems to me the natural and fitting thing, 
and the great advantage of having a separate chap- 
lain for the school — that the master of the boys 
should be officially as well as really their pastor, 



THE TEACHER. 203 

and that he should not devolve on another, however 
well qualified, one of his own most peculiar and 

solemn duties I consider that .... I am 

bound to be the religious instructor of my pupils 
by virtue of my situation." 

Full of this feeling, this opinion and this prac- 
tice, he developed in full measure those more spe- 
cial and concrete qualities which go to make up the 
ideal teacher. Up out of this quality, the other es- 
sential characteristics of the perfect teacher flow- 
ered and fruited vigorously. He came clearly and 
fally to realize the essential principles of modern 
education. " His whole method was founded on 
the principle of awakening the intellect of every 
individual boy," that which is called in modern ed- 
ucation, self-activity. "' Hence it was his practice 
to teach by questioning. As a general rule, he 
never gave information, except as a kind of reward 
for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, or 
checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from 
a sense that those whom he was addressing had not 
sufficient knowledge or sympathy to entitle them to 
receive it. His explanations were as short as pos- 
sible. . . . He not only laid great stress on original 
compositions, but endeavored so to choose the sub- 
jects of exercises as to oblige them to read and lead 
them to think for themselves. . . . St3^1e, knowl- 
edge, correctness or incorrectness of statement or 
expression he always disregarded in comparison 
with indication or promise of real thought." As is 
the practice in modern education, he began with the 



204 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

concrete wherever he could. He dealt a death blow 
to essays on abstract subjects such as '' Yirtus est 
bona res " and gave instead historical or geograph- 
ical descriptions, imaginary speeches or letters ; 
etymological accounts of words, or criticisms of 
books, or put religious and moral subjects in such 
a form as awakened a new and real interest in 
them. 

His religious spirit kept the spirit of growth in 
him, as before hinted. "• Intellectually as well as 
morally, he felt that the teacher ought to be per- 
petually learning. . . . ' I am sure,' he said, 
speaking of his pupils at Laleham, that ' I do not 
judge of them or expect of them as I should, 
if I were not taking pains to improve my own 
mind.' " Hence his soul was not shrunk down 
about theirs, but was ever expanding and expand- 
ing theirs. He took deep interest in all important 
I)ractical questions of the day. His pamphlets on 
political questions sometimes went through several 
editions, and his letters to newspapers were widely 
read and aroused earnest discussion. 

He also came to have in extraordinary measure 
that dramatic power which enabled him to realize 
the minds of students and act accordingly. "• His 
scholars used sometimes to be startled by the knowl- 
edge of their own notions which his speeches to 
them implied. ' Often and often,' says one of 
them, ' have I said to myself '' if it were one of our- 
selves who had just spoken, he could not more com- 
' pletely have known and understood our thoughts 



THE TEACHER. 205 

and ideas.*' ' " Thus also he acquired that last 
quality of the teacher by which he makes pupils 
teachers of each other. Arnold made his Sixth 
Form a distinct moral force in the school. He 
made the general public opinion of the school a 
wholesome and constructive power^ 

Thus we find that in both these great teachers, 
Pestalozzi and Arnold, the Christ spirit is the first 
and creative quality. The two men were very dif- 
ferent in many respects, as in nationality and lan- 
guage and social surroundings. Arnold had the 
resources and opportunities of a great public school 
at his command. Pestalozzi had only such pupils 
as he could gather up out of adversit3^ Arnold 
worked mainly in language on the plan of the old 
classical schools. Pestalozzi worked mainly in 
natural sciences. In the nature of the one, religion 
was explicit, in the other, implicit. In the one the 
religious trait was most prominent ; in the other, 
the ethical. But in whatever form appearing, and 
through whatever area of concrete manifesting it- 
self, in both these men alike the Christ spirit was 
the mainspring, the creative power of intense effect- 
iveness. Through Greek and through Botany in- 
differently, it worked to the formaticTn of a true and 
full manhood in teacher and taught alike. 

THE IBEAL TEACHER. 

Together then these teachers form a complete 
illustration of our statement that Christianity has a 
fundamental place in the making of those ever 



206 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

better teachers which advancing civilization de- 
mands. From them we may form a picture of that 
ideal teacher in whom all desirable qualities shall 
be intensely developed and perfectly combined. 
Every curve of his face, ever}^ motion of his hand, 
every tone of his voice, and every glance of his eye 
are nutritive and full of growth causing power. He 
sows like the sower in the painting by Millet. 
There is a sure swift penetration of the seed to 
its proper place. There is no mere superficial de- 
posit of it. He establishes a vital union between 
seed and soil. Truths that he utters, keep repeat- 
ing themselves in the mind, they invade new areas 
of the being ; with a direct and rapid penetration 
they root down. 

From his being floods of vivifying sunshine also 
pour out. From him a nutritive light constantly 
beats on those about him, a warm sunshine of joy 
ever pulses out. It beats upon the souls about him 
till the seed sown in them germinates, dull fiber 
starts into vision, and those new souls, out of which 
a new and better world is to be made, appear. But 
this power to sow is the same power which Jesus 
had when he sowed in parable in the stubborn heart 
of the Judsean ; this nutritive light pulsing and 
radiating from the soul of the teacher, is but part 
of that light which is to light the whole world. 



CHAPTER X. 

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN ITSELF. 

MOST IMPORTANT SINGLE ELEMENT. 

WE have hitherto considered the relation of 
moral and religious culture to the other 
elements of education and find this relation to be 
everywhere one of supreme importance. Let us 
now briefly consider the value of moral and re- 
ligious education in itself, as a distinct part of 
education. 

It will at once be seen that moral and religious 
education is the most important single element of 
culture, even when considered in its finite results 
alone. 

I. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ACTS THE MOST NUMEROUS. 

The qualities given by it are needed in the 
right performance of every act ; they are required 
constantly and by every one. We need to use the 
fact that quinine is a remedy for a cold at most but a 
few times a year, but we are required to apply some 
one of the Ten Commandments in some form a hun- 
dred times a day. The knowledge that the sum 
of the angles of a triangle is two right angles may 
be of practical value once a year — many get through 
life without it altogether — but we need to practice 

(207) 



208 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

courage and justice constantly. To know how to 
drive a nail right is of occasional value, but we 
must tell the truth, be veracious to ourselves and 
others, a score of times every hour. Even for the 
specialist this is true. The carpenter even, needs to 
tell the truth oftener than he drives a nail. The 
soldier needs to act with courage oftener than he 
needs to know the mechanism of his gun. The 
physician needs to use the Decalogue more fre- 
quently than he uses his pharmacopoeia. The 
lawyer should use the moral law far oftener for 
himself than he uses the common or statute law for 
others. 

Sometimes, also, there are distinct and promi- 
nent intellectual elements in an act, sometimes there 
are none. But in every act rightly performed, 
there are constant, essential moral qualities ; if no 
others are present, there must be the quality of 
veracity often appearing in many forms, and the 
quality of altruism, the necessity of aid in the per- 
formance of the act, and the necessity to share its 
fruitage. In every constructive act there is the 
religious element of faith. Hence the number of 
times moral and religious qualities are used in life 
far exceeds the number of times any otBer knowl- 
edges or powers are employed. 

II. THE MOST IMPORTANT. 

Not only are religious and moral acts relatively 
more numerous, they are also more important and 
fuller of far reaching consequences, than any other 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 209 

class. If a man drive a nail aright, it may save 
him a small, immediate financial loss ; but to tell 
the truth, makes all life golden. A knowledge of 
dress-making may prevent the mis cut and waste of 
a piece of cloth ; but a loving spirit ever clothes 
the soul in living light. The knowledge that germs 
of scarlet fever travel in milk, may save a life oc- 
casionally ; faith in the unseen power that sustains 
and controls all, saves all life continually. If a 
man have intellectual powers, he can make ex- 
changeable articles ; but if he have not veracity 
and altruism and faith, his powers cannot enrich 
the world. If a man have intellectuality alone, his 
life and work are likely to perish at any moment. 
A great destructive sin, a suicide of some sort is 
ever impending. But if a man have a developed 
spiritual nature, whatever he accomplishes is es- 
tablished ; it is multiplied and endures. Underly- 
ing the success of great men, there is often a re- 
ligious element, unsuspected by the general pub- 
lic. It may be crude and implicit but it is there, 
carrying forward the life with far-reaching power. 

Jay Gould testified before the Board of Education, 
concerning his early days, when it seemed as if 
he must give up and go back to his father ; " I sat 
down there and had a good cry, and all of a sudden 
it occurred to me that m}^ sister's unfailing remedy 
when in trouble was pra3^er, and there in the woods 
I dropped on my knees, and prayed that I might 
have an opportunity to succeed. After that I felt 
better. I resolved to go ahead, and, if need be, to 

14 



210 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

die in the last ditch." Religious communities, how- 
ever little stress they lay on intellectual develop- 
ment, are prosperous, as is exemplified by the Men- 
nonites, Shakers, Mormons and similar religious 
societies. It was observed in the ancient world, that 
wherever one travelled among heathen or barbarous 
peoples, the statehouse might be missing, or the 
fortress, or the academy, but the temple and some 
form of religious worship were always found. 
These were indispensable to civilization, however 
crude and primary. In the exact language of Plu- 
tarch,^ '' if you will take the pains to travel through 
the world, you may find towns and cities without 
walls, without letters, without kings, without houses, 
without wealth, without money, without theatres 
and places of exercise ; but there was never seen 
nor shall be seen by man any city without tem- 
ples and gods, or without making use of prayers, 
oaths, divinations, and sacrifices for the obtain- 
ing of blessings and benefits, and the averting 
of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opinion, 
that a city might sooner be built without any 
ground to fix it on, than a commonwealth con- 
stituted altogether void of any religion and opinion 
of the gods, — or being constituted be preserved.'' 
Morality and religion are always successful, while 
intellectuality alone is almost alwaj^s unsuccessful. 
Love, truth and faith, however feeble may be the 
other powers that accompany them, are supremely 
attractive, while intellect alone is often repulsive. 
Thomas Arnold expresses his opinion of it thus : 



MORAL AKD RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 211 

^^Mere intellectual acuteness, cliyested as it is in 
too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and 
great and good, is to be more revolting than the 
most helpless imbecilit3\" 

III. THE MOST DIFFICULT. 

Not only are moral and religious acts more 
numerous and more important than any other 
class, they are also more difficult. While the in- 
tellectual life of nine hundred and ninety-nine of 
every one thousand soon becomes substantially a 
mechanical routine, the entire necessary moral life 
never become easy to the great majority of people. 
Intellectual effort above a certain point is avoidable 
and below that point it becomes subconscious habit. 
By living within a narrow area and following 
others within that area, in time all real intellectual 
effort ceases. But moral acts of the most crucial 
and intense sort, are omnipresent and unavoidable. 
Moses could easily flee away from the culture life 
of Eg3^pt into the wilderness of Midian, but he 
could not flee away from the injustice and oppres- 
sion which permeated that life. About the first 
well to which he came he found the same moral 
struggle raging, which he had left in Egj^pt ; he 
must see that the daughters of Jethro have justice. 

The narrowness of intellectual life often in- 
creases the moral effort required. Strenuous moral 
exertion scarcely ceases in every ordinary, right- 
loving life. In Jesus' life even, the intellectual 
power of his thought and beauty of his language 



212 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

seem spontaneous, while moral effort increases, if 
anything, till the climax came in Gethsemane. 
When we observe this fact in his life, it seems 
doubtful whether Moses ever attained a sweetness 
of spirit where unceasing meekness was preserved, 
at all points, without effort ; or whether Aristides 
ever reached a point, where it was not sometimes 
difficult to tell the truth ; or John B. Gough was 
so completely changed, that appetite altogether 
ceased to stir. Unavoidable, strenuous moral and 
religions effort of some sort is a constant element, 
or should be, in almost all lives. 

IV. RELATION TO THE FUTURE. 

In the future, the moral and religious element of 
life as compared with others, will be of even greater 
importance. As life becomes more full and swift, 
moral acts will become more numerous and far- 
reaching in their importance. The more exchange 
develops, the more acts of the higher nature of 
man, the more veracities, altruisms and faiths are 
demanded. Every man is using less and less of 
what he makes himself and more and more of what 
is made by others, and proportionately the func- 
tions of veracity and brotherly love are extended. 
A meal was once mainly a local or even a domes- 
tic affair. Now it is the resultant of almost innu- 
merable, wide spread moral acts, and in the future 
the number of these w^ill be vastly greater. The 
reader of a Philadelphia daily, in return for one 
cent gets the product of the labor of over eleven 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 218 

hundred persons directly employed by the news- 
paper itself. If the newspaper is properly pre- 
pared, how many veracities and other moral acts 
are here combined. The time will come when an 
equal number of these will be combined and re- 
ceived in return for every cent that is expended. 
Every railroad gives morality a larger constructive 
power. Every telegraph gives love a new multi- 
plier. Communication and concentration make a 
nation as mutually helpful in its parts, potentially 
at least, as a city once was. A great deed more 
quickly and manifoldjy benefits the whole United 
States, than such an act once did the thirteen 
colonies. As human knowledge increases, the func- 
tion of faith is also enlarged. The larger the circle 
of light, the larger the surrounding circle of intel- 
lectual darkness where faith reigns. Thus we see 
in brief that more exchange calls for more moral- 
ity ; more wealth for more love ; more truth for 
more faith. In life the moral and religious element 
is and always will be much the largest. 

It at once follows as a consequence that this 
element must have the first place in education, and 
this quite apart from its value in assisting the other 
processes of education. As an aid to them it is of 
great value ; apart from them and 3^et in compari- 
son with them it towers up supreme. 

I. RELATION TO SO-CALLED PRACTICAL LIFE AND 
EDUCATION. 

The whole matter may be viewed in another 



214 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

light, by comparing different forms and species of 
education, one with anotlier. The battle between 
those who favor a liberal education, and those who 
prefer a merely technical education is constant and 
at times fierce. The question is ever being asked 
by parent and pupil alike with regard to every 
study, arithmetic, algebra, psychology, '' Of what 
use is it ? " And '' of what use '' is narrowed more 
and more to mean, "how many dollars and cents 
will it directly turn out in the future?" What 
knowledge, what education is of the most worth ? 
This question is interpreted to mean, what will 
produce the largest financial return in the shortest 
time. The doubt, for example, has gained ground 
" whether what is called a college education is not 
thrown away upon one intending to be a manufac- 
turer or a farmer or a trader ; " or further than this 
'' whether education for any of the learned profes- 
sions or scientific pursuits should concern itself 
with anything but the technical knowledge of those 
professions and pursuits." Andrew Carnegie be- 
fore the Pierce School of Business says : " I have no 
hesitation in stating that any young man or young 
woman fortunate enough to have to make his or 
her own way in the world, chooses wisely b}^ mak- 
ing an early start. I believe that three or four 
years spent at that time of life would be unwisely 
spent in trying to obtain all that a university gives 
to its graduates. ... It is best as a rule to go into 
direct contact with practical work, real things, and 
obtain their education in the finest school — the 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 215 

world around them — and study in their spare 
hours." 

Mr. Chauncey M. Depew replies : " There are 
two boys of an equal condition in life and of about 
equal capacity, who are fifteen years of age and 
who live in a country village. They both have 
been through the common schools. One of them 
goes into the village store .... the other goes 
into the preparatory school and through college. 
At the end of six j^ears the one who entered the 
store or mill has been six years in business and pro- 
gressing along, and at the end of six years the 
college graduate comes in to enter the same mill or 
the same store which his friend did six years be- 
fore. Now, [Mr.] Carnegie says that the college 
graduate never catches up, and that if he did catch 
up he has got so much Greek and Latin and math- 
ematics and nonsense in his head, which is utterly 
worthless for business, that he cannot stay there 
when he gets there. As n matter of fact, in my 
observations, extending over a system that em- 
ploys sixty thousand men, I find that that man 
with the trained mind which has been expanded so 
that it quickly grasps anything which is pre- 
sented, who has learned how and where to look for 
information, who wastes no time upon the useless, 
but has under his control a perfect, drilled, equipped 
machine, masters in a few months what it took his 
friend as many years to master, and when he reaches 
the place where his friend is, instead of rattling 
around on a chair, he is grasping the intricacies of 



216 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

business." ^' A liberal education gives to the mind 
that exercise in every department which presents 
its owner with the power to control its operations, 
to concentrate it upon the work in hand, to fit it for 
the relaxation which is necessary for a well-ordered 
intellect." 

Other aspects of the same question also have been 
expressed by Prof. C. J. little in the following elo- 
quent passage : '' What college can claim him 
[Edison] for her child? Any one college? No I 
But all the colleges and all the thinkers of all lands 
and epochs can claim him, and make good the 
claim. It is the glory of scholars that they have 
never sold their secrets. The communion of sages 
has been an open one ; humanity has been from the 
beginning the only heir of science, and therefore it 
is that Edison s are possible ; therefore it is that the 
whole industrial S3 stem in our day throbs and 
thrills to the brain-beat and the heart-beat of the 
noble company of thinkers who are the glory of 
the university, and who, though dead, are the life 
and substance of the modern world. For Euclid 
is sitting always beside the locomotive engineer, 
making the iron pathway safe before him, guiding 
him along the mountain ledge and piercing with his 
thought the mountain's breast ; Galileo still places 
the sextant in the navigator's hand, while Ampere 
and Faraday correct his compass for him when the 
needle swerves deflected by the iron hull ; Liebig 
is still walking at the plowman's side and fertiliz- 
ing the barren acres with the open secrets of his 



MORAL AKD EELIGIOUS EDUCATtOK. 21T 

thought ; Descartes and Kewton help to build our 
bridges and our engines too; the thoughts of 
Priestley and Lavoisier flash out sparkling when- 
ever the iron now turns to steel ; the thoughts of 
Huyghens and Fresnel go flashing from the light- 
house tower to tell the mariner of danger and of 
home. It is black ingratitude then when so-called 
practical men speak contemptuously of science and 
higher education, for without them the industrial 
system of our world would pine and perish. With- 
out them, in fact, it would never have had a being.'' 
Likewise in the work of men of letters, Carlyle 
finds a most valuable practical element. Goethe 
helped form the national spirit of Germany; the 
value of this in dollars and cents, as well as in all 
that is higher, is seen when we contrast the Thirty 
Years' War with the Franco-German war of 1870. 
It is seen when we view the German educational 
system, and the influence of this the world over. 

II. ITS INCLUSIVE RELATIONS. 

But when looked at in relation to the moral and 
religious element in education, the whole question 
becomes dwarfed and partially solved. That educa- 
tion is of the most practical value which has the 
most real morality and religion in it. By making 
education more moral and religious we make it 
more practical, more supremely and universally 
valuable. The first element in every really prac- 
tical education, is the distinctly Christian one. 
The most practical of all values is that which af- 



218 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

fects the philosophy' of life, and exalts the conduct 
of life. Liberal education gains the day in propor- 
tion as it is shown that various kinds of knowledge 
have a moral and religious worth. 

Herbert Spencer makes a long discussion of the 
question of what kinds of knowledge and what 
activities are of the most worth and arrives at the 
following classification : 

First, those which minister to self-preservation, 
directly or indirectly, as knowledge of phys- 
iology, disease, and the laws of health. 

Second, those which have for their end, the rearing 
and discipline of offspring. 

Third, those which are involved in the maintenance 
of proper social and political relations. 

Fourth, those miscellaneous activities which make 
up the leisure part of life, devoted to the 
gratification of the tastes and feelings. 

First, existence, then, offspring, then, comforts, 
then, pleasures, this is the order of value in which 
he would place human knowledges and activities. 
He would assign the same order of importance to 
them in education and lay proportionate stress 
upon the sciences which relate to them, and regard 
these as forming all of education. But, one form 
of activity, one form of knowledge, may include 
many others in the most intense way. The best 
way to achieve them all, may be to achieve this one 
intense inclusive form. The best way often to make 
a farmer is to give the man a love of growing 



MOEAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 219 

things, a feeling that is both moral and esthetic. 
This will include and develop knowledge of the 
methods and conditions that will produce the best 
growths. The gardener who really loves roses, will 
learn all about soils. The Woman who desires 
beauty, will often strive most earnestl}^ for health. 
In this inclusive wa}^ is religious and moral edu- 
cation related to all other elements of culture. He 
whose soul is most truly religious, will be the one 
who will find life the most precious, and will search 
out the means of preserving it ; he will strive to 
train and develop the best offspring ; he will do all 
in his power to make life full of pleasure and com- 
fort for all his fellow creatures. Religious educa- 
tion thus including all other elements of education 
so supremely as in a measure to make them indif- 
ferent to order, clearly rises as the first element in 
education. 

III. VALUE INCREASES WITH AMOUNT. 

Its supreme importance is also seen in the light 
of another fact. The demand for moral and relig- 
ious qualities and the field for the application is 
illimitable, while overproduction in almost every 
other line of work is possible and usually unavoid- 
able. It is easy to flood the country with civil en- 
gineers, typewriters, even physicians and lawyers. 
The cry is raised in Germany that there are too 
many highly educated men. In literature also, it is 
a question whether too many, even of what are 
called good books, are not being written. The accu- 



220 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATIOK, 

mulation of pure facts even at last ceases to be 
valuable. 

Astronomers having discovered OA^er three hun- 
dred asteroids found it necessary at one time to let 
some of them drop 'back into the unknown. Espe- 
cially is it true that a limit is soon found to the 
number of individuals, that can be profitably edu- 
cated for any technical or so-called practical occupa- 
tion. All further increase in the number so edu- 
cated, diminishes the value of this education for 
those possessing it. So able a man as Herbert 
Spencer, educated as a civil engineer, left his pro- 
fession because it became overcrowded. But with 
moral and religious values it is very different, 
Every gain in love and faith and reverence, which 
the world makes, gives a new value to that which 
it already possesses. The best manhood and 
womanhood in inillionfold abundance, would but 
make each unit more valuable and fruitful to all 
the rest. 

THE ABSOLUTE VALUE. 

Nor is it to be forgotten that in all these ways we 
but catch glimpses of the deeper, transcendental 
value of religion. In time a conception is formed 
of that value in it, which is absolute. A love for 
it arises, which asks no causes or reasons, and 
never thinks to compare. 

CONCLUSIONS OF EDUCATORS. 

From whatever standpoint we look at the ques- 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 221 

tion, we therefore arrive at the same conclusion. 
Hence it is that almost all great educators have 
agreed on religious education, including the moral, 
as the supreme element, the summation and goal of 
ail education. With Comenius '' the end of all ed- 
ucation was the religious life as embracing moral- 
ity, an end common to him with all educational 
writers of any value.'' Ratke said, '' Begin every- 
thing with prayer. Consider everything by itself 
and yet in its relation to the infinite." Guizot 
said, " Popular education to be traly good and so- 
cially useful must be fundamentally religious." 
Such in substance was the opinion also of Milton 
and Locke ; such is the opinion of the modern Ger- 
man school of pedagogy. Froebel forcibly ex- 
presses his opinion thus: ^' Only the Christian, 
only the human being with the Christian spirit, 
life and aspiration, can possibly attain a true un- 
derstanding and a living knowledge of nature. . . . 
The school should first of all teach the religion of 
Christ. Everywhere and in all zones, the school 
should instruct for and in this religion." 

The Commissioners appointed by the Crown, to 
examine the English system of education in 1886, 
report : " Wliile the whole commission is animated 
by one and the same desire, to secure for the chil- 
dren in the public elementary schools the best and 
most thorough instruction in secular subjects suit- 
able to their years, and in harmony with the re- 
quirements of their future life, it is also unani- 
mously of the opinion that tlieir religious and moral 



222 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

training is a matter of still higher importance alike 
to the children, the parents, and the nation, though 
the views of its members differ as to the method 
whereby this object of supreme moment should be 
obtained." 

Such being the position of the religious element 
in education, and such its relation to the other ele- 
ments, it remains to consider the practical question 
of making it as effective a part as possible of a 
general system of education. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PKACTICAL PROBLEM. 

IN all education, we have found that religious 
and moral culture is a fundamental factor. It 
may be made to tell with invaluable effect in the 
different, individual growth processes of the mind, 
as well as in physical culture, in the general cuL 
ture of an adult people, and in the making of 
teachers. It holds the first place with reference 
to informal and systematic education alike. It is 
of supreme importance, both in itself, and as an aid 
to other processes of education. Hence it be- 
hooves men, wherever and however, possible to 
make religious education prominent and effective. 
It behooves men, wherever possible, in the home, 
the church, the church society, the Christian school, 
to unite secular and religious education, to de- 
velop each to the highest point, and make them as 
mutually helpful as can be. It behooves men, 
wherever religious and secular education are sep- 
arated for any reason, to put the separated halves 
into as close and organic a relation as possible. 

I. SEPARATED EDUCATION. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 
ADAPTED. 

If, as many think, it is best, or necessary, that 

(223) 



224 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATIOK. 

only the great body of secular education should be 
provided for by the state, and religious education 
be left to parents and church organizations, it is 
the duty and interest of all concerned to develop 
these two halves of education into the closest pos- 
sible functional relations. Every parent should 
interest himself vitally in his child's religious edu- 
cation and try to early develop in him that com- 
prehensive spiritual expansion, that conscientious- 
ness, and that lovingkinclness, which are of supreme 
value in themselves, and in relation to all other 
processes of development. He should do this in 
relation to specific subjects of instruction at school, 
as well as to life in general. Church organizations 
should act in the most definite possible relation to 
the life and work of the child. 

To the attentive observer there is already dis- 
coverable in the United States, where separated 
education prevails, a tendency thus to develop re- 
ligious education into closer functional relations 
with secular education. Organizations like the 
Christian Endeavor Society and the Epworth 
League, which have grown with such phenomenal 
rapidity, have general culture courses as a feature ; 
the}^ also call for religious work and action, directly 
on the principles of self-activity of modern educa- 
tion. Sunday-school work is being modified in 
the light of better secular educational methods. 
In many Sunday-schools normal classes have been 
established, in which teachers are trained and from 
which they graduate. Denominational colleges in 



THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM. 225 

the United States have, from their inception, done 
an invaluable service, in training for the public 
schools, teachers full of a moral and religious 
spirit. Thus in our land, the outside religious 
forces seem to be developing themselves as a more 
distinct factor and half of education, and into 
functional relations with the secular schools. 
Every means of aiding this process should be 
utilized to the utmost. 

SECULAR EDUCATION ADAPTED. 

In another foremost country, France, separated 
education also exists, the state providing for the 
secular part of the course, and leaving the religious 
part to parents and church organizations. But in 
France the state fully recognizes the organic rela- 
tions between the two parts. Thursday of each 
week is ^' given as a whole holiday in order to have 
children taught in the religion to which they be- 
long, outside the precincts of the school." The 
government goes still further in it^ recognition of 
the relation of religion to the schools.^ "' During 
the week preceding their confirmation [first com- 
munion], the teacher will allow children to be ab- 
sent from school, even during regular school hours, 
in order to enable them to perform their religious 
duties and attend church if necessary." Thus the 
government in France seems to be putting the 
schools into functional relations with religion as an 
outside force, while on the other hand in the United 
States, the outside religious forces seem . to be 

15 



226 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

putting themselves into such relations with the 
schools. 

Not long ago Lyman Abbott published an article 
in the Century Magazine^ entitled, " Can a nation 
have a religion ? " In this he shows, quite apart 
from the question of the union of Church and 
State, in how many ways the political organization 
is dependent on religion, how many governmental 
questions are, in controlling essence. Christian ques- 
tions. He suggests that though a formal union of 
Church and State is impossible, it is yet possible 
for the State to recognize and foster religion in 
general, as a constructive force, with far reaching 
beneficial results. One application of this would 
be for the State to do all in its power to keep the 
schools in effective functional relations with the 
religious forces of the land. If this be done in 
every practicable way, good results must follow. 

But it is a question whether religion, as a part of 
separated education, can be made effective in the 
highest way. If religious education is to be made 
fully efficient in other growth processes, it should 
be carried on in direct connection with them. If 
the spiritual is the supreme element in culture, it 
should have the very best teachers, whereas, in sep- 
arated systems, it must often be handed over to 
those who have little fitness beyond good will and 
earnest desire. It should be made effective in 
every life, while in separated education, where the 
religious half is left to voluntary effort, many do 
not get it at all, and very large numbers, in no true 



THE PRACTICAL PEOBLEM. 227 

sense. Is religious education capable of a more 
vital and fruitful union with secular education ? 

VALUE OF A CLOSER UNION. 

Often men, seeing the intimate relation of all the 
great constructive forces in the world, and the im- 
mense advantages that apparently would result, if 
these agencies could be united, have dreamed of a 
great universal kingdom, where religion, political 
forces and education working efficiently together 
would transform the world. 

Men of action have at times tried to bring this 
kingdom into actual being. Pope Leo the Tenth 
aimed to unite all secular governments under the 
ecclesiastical dominion of the church of Rome. 
Louis the Fourteenth of France attempted to make 
the state supreme, and to have a single uniform re- 
ligion united with but subordinate to it. But all 
union of church and state in the past have re- 
sulted in evil. Instead of the church vivif^ang and 
purifying the state and acting with and for the 
church to give broad and energetic application to its 
powers as was intended, the state too often has be- 
come a mere instrument in the hands of a selfish hier- 
archy, and the church itself has relaxed into form- 
alism and frequently into corruption. Must some- 
thing like this be true also in the relation of secu- 
lar education and religious education ? Are these 
in practice better managed apart, however great 
the apparent advantages of uniting them ? Or do 
we find here the true, the correct beginning of that 



228 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

Kingdom of God, which has been not only dreamed 
of, but predicted ? Is this the first healthy place of 
union of higher constructive forces ? If this union 
be rightly made will the way open to others ? Have 
previous attempts been made too clumsily, in too 
gross and massive and concrete a way ? Is this a 
place where union can be made in essence, whence 
we can feel our way on in essence, and finally ar- 
rive at a fruitful combination in essence, if not in 
form, of all the higher constructive forces in the 
world ? It is with deep interest that we scan the 
various efforts that have been made to bring to- 
gether religious and secular instruction, in a mutu- 
ally beneficial and creative union. 

The various methods by which religious instruc- 
tion has been incorporated as a part of a general 
scheme of education, may be grouped into three 
classes, the Sectarian, the Semi-Sectarian, and the 
Unsectarian but Religious. 

II. SECTARIAN EDUCATION. 

By sectarian schools we mean those directly and 
completely under the control of some church or- 
ganization, as are denominational schools and 
colleges in England and America, as were the 
schools of France before 1870, the schools of 
Sweden for several centuries, and as have been the 
Jewish schools and schools of the Jesuits in all 
their history. In these, many forms of control by 
religious organizations appear, but the principle 



THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM. 229 

involved and method represented in all are essen- 
tially the same. 

A PROTESTANT EXPERIENCE. 

The schools of Sweden are, in particular, a rep- 
resentative instance. This school system, like that 
of Germany, is one of the fruits of the Reforma- 
tion. Born of the church, it has been under the 
direct charge of the church from its inception. 
Within the past fifty years the state has assumed 
some control, and each school district now elects a 
school board, yet this " board is under the control 
of the church authorities and merely acts as execu- 
tive of the consistory." A recent proposed re- 
moval of the bishop from the control of the high 
schools of his diocese, aroused so much opposition 
that the " latest advices would indicate its non-ac- 
ceptance by the people." The nature of the relig- 
ious instruction formerly given in Swedish schools, 
was largely determined by a law promulgated by 
Charles IX. in 1686, " that no person should marry 
unless he could repeat Luther's catechism and had 
partaken of the Lord's Supper." In the schools 
established by the peasants to fit themselves to 
meet this catechism requirement, " the text books 
consisted of the primer, the smaller and larger 
catechism, and singing books." The plan of direct, 
dogmatic instruction has been continued to the 
present, though the results have often been far from 
satisfactory. 

For instance we quote the following from Pro- 



230 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

fessor Austin Phelps^ : " It appears that it was a 
feature in the organic law of Sweden, that the 
schools should teach all the yovith of the kingdom 
the Lutheran catechism : as the Swedish pastors 
termed it, the schools should '• teach religion ' to the 
children. Accordingly every Swedish child of suit- 
able age was ' taught religion ' by catechetical drill 
supervised by the pastor of his parish. Probably 
there was not then, if there is now, another country 
on the globe where this duty was so scrupulously 
attended to as there. But, at the time referred to, 
the complaint was universal among the clergy and 
the thoughtful laity of Sweden, that the vitality of 
the old faith was dying out. In hundreds of par- 
ishes the youth droned the catechism as a necessity 
to their civil standing in after life ; but the ancient 
faith was no longer breathed in the ancient form." 
" Side by side with this admirably compacted sys- 
tem of catechetical routine, there sprang up an ob- 
scure sect of * Lascari,' as they were termed ; that is, 
^ readers,' as I understand the title. They resem- 
bled in spirit the Methodists of England. They 
derived their name from the fact that their religious 
teachers, with no ecclesiastical status recognized by 
either Church or State, were simply readers of the 
Bible. They erected plain meeting-houses, like 
barns, to evade the law of the realm against the 
unlicensed erection of churches. The people for- 
sook the old temples of their fathers and flocked in 
thousands to the cheerless barns of the Lascari, to 
hear the Bible read. . . . Some of them journeyed 



THE PEACTICAL PEOBLEM. 231 

from ten to sixt}^ miles for the purpose. Many 
gave evidence of spiritual conversion." Here we 
have plainly indicated to us, all the better perhaps 
because it is in a Protestant country, that mere 
formal denominational instruction in the schools is 
not, of itself, enough. The whole subject of relig- 
ious instruction in the schools was thoroughly de- 
bated by a convention of Swedish teachers in 
August, 1888, and as a result it has been decided, 
while diminishing the number of hours of instruc- 
tion, to make the study less dogmatic and more 
Biblical. 

In the experience of Sweden we fairly see in- 
dicated the strength of the system of sectarian 
education, its weakness, and also the tendency or 
direction of development into something better. 
However distasteful it has been at times to the peo- 
ple, there can be no doubt that it has been an eflS.- 
cent factor in keeping the people of Sweden, from 
the time of the Reformation to the present, pure 
and strong in religious belief, and in moral life ; it 
was this very system, perhaps, w^hich made the 
" Lascari " possible. It shows the danger that, 
when a church is in control of schools, these 
schools be made only narrowly effective for direct 
and immediate uses of the church as an ecclesias- 
tical organization, rather than broadly efficient for 
the life of the people ; the peril that religious in- 
struction itself die down into narrow formalism. 
The direction of needed development is also shown 
in the tendency to make religious instruction in the 



232 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

schools more purely and directly Biblical, leaying 
more to the individual eonseience, and thus furnish- 
ing the mind with material which the church can 
use in systematic and exact ways, crowning it with 
catechism and creed if it desire, 

A CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE. 

These results which an examination of the case 
of Sweden has given us, are confirmed and further 
illustrated by other instances. In the general 
renovation which France has given herself since 
the downfall of 1870, every ascertainable source of 
weakness has been searched into and remedied. A 
new education has been decided upon, as a first 
step toward a new Prance. One conclusion ar- 
rived at was that the inefficiency of the schools be- 
fore 18Y0 was due to the domination in them 'of 
the Catholic priesthood, and that ^' the preliminary 
condition of all progress was the secularization of 
education." Priestly education had perhaps been 
efficient, but it had become a narrow efficiency for 
the material interest of the church. The great 
question had become, *^ whether the priesthood, or 
the bulk of the people, shall have the dominating 
influence over popular education." It was felt 
that the first thing to be done to "' enable Prance 
to resume the march onward which was begun by 
the revolution of 1*789" was to ^^ secularize the 
schools," perhaps too absolute an expression. By 
it was meant, rather the exclusion of the priests, 
than the exclusion of all religious provisions. All 



THE PEACTICAL PEOBLEM. 233 

teachers must be laymen, but the child is to have 
fall moral instruction, and careful specifications with 
regard to the scope and details of this instruction 
are given. It is to be noted that the inculcation 
of duties to God is included in it. More than this, 
as we have alread}^ stated, specific religious in- 
struction outside the schools is recognized, and the 
schools put in some organic relation to it. But as 
a whole the experience of France previous to 18T0 
illustrates the unsatisfactory nature of sectarian 
education. 

OTHER INSTANCES. 

The recent attempt of the German government to 
establish sectarian schools shows us how thoroughly 
convinced the German people are of the unwisdom of 
such a course. As a result of the policy of Fred- 
erick the Great, in all schools for nearly a century, 
moral and religious instruction, chiefly by the school- 
master, has been compulsory ; in fact one of the 
chief aims has been the religious and moral develop- 
ment of the 2Dupil. But this was to be Christian, 
non-sectarian education. The Prussian government 
proposed in 1891 a law,^ by which to substitute 
sectarian schools for this system. It provided 
that, " in the organization of elementary schools, 
sectarian considerations are to be regarded as far 
as possible. As a general rule every child shall be 
taught by a teacher of his own sect." " New 
elementary schools shall be organized on a sec- 
tarian basis only." " When it happens that in any 



284 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

school of a particular sect, there are more than 
thirty children of some one other sect," a separate 
elementary school shall be established. There 
were numerous other provisions in development of 
the general principle. But, as all remember, the 
result of this proposal was a storm of popular dis- 
satisfaction v/hich shook the German throne, and 
annulled the attempt. 

The Jewish system of education was and is 
efficient, but only narrowl3^ so, and is rejected by 
the world at large. The Jesuit system attains 
much of its purpose, but not in a wa}^ generally 
helpful to mankind. Both show the extraordinary 
value of religion as a factor in education, but they 
do not show how to make it useful to the world at 
large, when thus used. On the other hand sec- 
tarian and denominational schools and colleges in 
Great Britain and America do show, in suggestive 
ways, how to make religion effective in the general 
educational life of the world. They make clear 
that schools, where religious education is included 
as a part of general education, are broadly efficient 
in proportion as they are liberal and teach the 
essence of the Christian religion, rather than 
denominational technique. 

For instance who can easily measure the valuable 
and even splendid work done by the American 
denominational colleges ? Who can measure the 
work done by the New England colleges in the late 
civil war, and in the formation of the higher life of 
the great West? How is the higher moral and 



THE PKACTICAL PROBLEM. 235 

religious life of the nation at large, diminished, if 
we subtract from it, the influence of all denomin- 
ational schools ! This extraordinarily broad and 
healthy influence has been largely due, as we have 
indicated, to the liberal nature of the religious in- 
struction given in these institutions, followed up 
as it has been by earnest special instruction in the 
churches themselves. Denominational lines have 
not been so strictly drawn in sectarian institutions, 
but that Methodists have attended Presbyterian 
colleges. Presbyterians have been educated at 
Baptist institutions, and Catholics in Methodist 
schools. Even Princeton, while maintaining her 
sturdy theology, has made her formal collegiate in- 
struction so liberal, that individuals from all other 
principal denominations have come there to be 
educated. It may be that the largeness of the 
number of denominations in the United States, and 
then early equal strength of the leading ones, have 
prevented any single one from obtaining an un- 
wholesome predominance, and have tended to 
liberalize them all. The great mass of non-sectarian 
education interfused among them, may have helped 
to the same end. At any rate the fact and its 
result are evident. 

Ever}' where then in sectarian schools, we perceive, 
on the one hand, the extraordinary power of re- 
ligion as a factor in education, and on the other 
hand, the diflflculty in making strict sectarian 
education broadly eflScient, but that denominational 
instruction does become broadly efficient and satis- 



236 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

factory in proportion as it becomes a teaching of 
the underlying essence of religion and morals, and 
leaves the rest of religious instruction to private 
and church agencies. 

III. SEMI-SECTARIAN EDUCATION. 

The second method of giving religious instruc- 
tion in connection with ordinary school teaching is 
what may be approximately termed the semi-sectar- 
ian. By this is meant sectarian teaching under spe- 
cial or limited arrangement, as either before or after 
the regular school hours, or during school hours, 
allowing pupils, whose parents so desire, to with- 
draw. Religious and secular education are thus in 
semi-union ; separated in time, yet carried on in 
the same place. They are superposed but not in- 
terorganized. About twenty years ago, the Board 
of Education of the city of Poughkeepsie assumed 
control of two large parochial schools in the city 
under the following conditions. The city paid a 
nominal rent for the buildings, took entire charge 
of the appointment of teachers and of the courses 
of instruction, and thus virtually placed city 
schools in the buildings. The city, however, al- 
lowed the Catholic church to use the buildings for 
its own purposes outside of school hours. Thus it 
was possible for the church to have Catholic schol- 
ars remain after school, and to give them religious 
instruction of such nature as it desired. Another 
similar instance which has attracted attention 
throughout the country, and filled educational 



THE PEACTICAL PROBLEM. 237 

journals with discussion^ is the Stillwater-Fari- 
bault case in Minnesota. 

In the schools of some sections of Canada, in some 
schools in England, and in other parts of Europe, 
sectarian instruction is permitted under similar ar- 
rangements. The most notable case is that of En- 
gland. In the school laws of that country are 
elaborate provisions for religious education. Sec- 
tarian education is possible but children are 
allowed to withdraw while it is being given. 
The times of religious instruction in such cases 
must be at the beginning or end of the regular 
school hours, and these hours are to be ^' inserted 
in a time-table, to be approved by the education 
department . . . and conspicuously aflSxed in 
every school room ; and an}^ scholar may be 
withdrawn by his parent from such observance 
or instruction without forfeiting any of the other 
benefits of the school." But while sectarian 
teaching is thus possible, it is not to any de- 
gree practiced. In the board schools, which are 
those most closely corresponding to our public 
schools, and hence most truly representing the 
^' real attitude of mind which Englishmen hold 
toward religious instruction," out of over twenty- 
two hundred schools, less than one hundred have 
religious instruction on this basis, namely, denom- 
inational teaching ^' allowed under special agree- 
ment," while nearly two thousand have undenomi- 
national religious instruction or observance of 
some sort. 



238 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

It is further clear that the same causes which 
limit the efficiency of separate education, limit that 
of semi-sectarian education also. The relation of 
the religious to the other elements of education is 
so intimate, that they should be combined as thor- 
oughly and organically as possible. But semi-sec- 
tarian education combines them no more vitally 
than does separate education. It is also of im- 
portance that the teachers, who give the rest of the 
instruction in the schools, should be the teachers 
of Christian principles as well. As the religious ele- 
ment is the most important, every principle of 
pedagogy, every fact of experience, every fiber of 
accumulated power, should be brought to bear in 
instilling it. The commission appointed in 1886 to 
investigate the English system of religious educa- 
tion reports, that "• it is of the highest importance 
that the teachers who are charged with the moral 
training of the scholars should continue to take 
part in the religious instruction, and that any sep- 
aration of the teacher from the religious instruc- 
tion of the school would be injurious to the moral 
and secular training of the scholars." In semi- 
sectarian and sectarian education alike, we thus 
find a tendency toward unsectarianism in religious 
instruction given as a part of the general educa- 
tion of the people. 

IV. NON-SECTARIAN BUT RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 

The third method of giving religious instruction 
in public schools, is that which is unsectarian but 



THE PEACTICAL PEOBLEM. 239 

religious. Recognizing the supreme place of the 
religious element both in itself and as a factor in 
all the rest of education, it is the aim to include it 
in general school education, yet to include only 
that part of religion which is common to the teach- 
ing and belief of ail denominations. For example, 
the principle underlying such instruction in the 
Prussian schools since 1799 is, ^' that instruction in 
religion in these [the people's or public] schools 
should confine itself to the general truths of religion, 
and the morals underlying all church parties ; in 
other words, it should be Christian, but non-sectar- 
ian." 

In the board schools of England, there is a 
clause forbidding " the teaching of any religious 
catechism or religious formulary which is distinct- 
ive of any particular denomination." 

' But while the aim in both these systems is 
thus non-sectarian, the desired ideal seems to be 
but imperfectly attained in actual practice. In 
Prussia the ground covered by religious instruc- 
tion is " biblical history, the catechism with Bible 
verses, the memorizing of hymns, the essential 
points of Christian ethics, and the creed." On the 
one hand, this instruction, including as it does the 
creed and catechism, does not appear to be truly 
unsectarian, and we are prepared for the further 
statement that '' Protestants, Catholics and Israel- 
ites are, as much as possible, taught in sepa- 
rate schools. Where they attend mixed schools, 
they are separated during the lesson of religion." 



240 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

On the other hand, the undenominational religious 
instruction given, covers cnl}^ " biblical history " 
and " essential points of religious ethics," and is 
therefore so limited that it cannot be said to be a 
truly comprehensive and suggestive essence of the 
common basis of all sectarian teachings. If we 
examine the scope of the religious instruction 
given in English non-sectarian schools, we find a 
great range of difference. In a great number of 
them, the Bible is read without comment, and per- 
haps hymns are sung and prayer offered. Where 
there is distinctive and more aggressive religious 
instruction, we find that much work is done in 
biblical history, in memorizing passages of Scrip- 
ture ; the doctrinal instruction includes learning 
the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and 
the Apostles' Creed. In neither of these cases do 
we find any thorough systematic effort to cover the 
facts of religion, what we may call the study of 
descriptive religion, nor yet to work out and instil 
that common fundamental essence which underlies 
all religion. * 

Crude and undeveloped as this method seems, 
in comparison with the thorough, scientific in- 
struction given in some departments of work, it 
yet has produced important results. The value of 
it is keenly appreciated by the German people. 
Skeptical as is the scholarship of Germany, as a 
body the people are deeply and instinctively relig- 
ious ; they are full of an implicit religious feeling. 
The value they attach to the system in use among 



[the practical problem. 241 

them is clearly shown by that storm which arose, 
when a change toward sectarianism was suggested, 
almost as if the Fatherland itself had been assailed. 
The results in England are also A'aluable, The 
Royal Commission, before mentioned, reports that 
" greatly as the estimate of the value of the relig- 
ious instruction given in the board schools varies 
with the standpoint from which it is regarded, 
there is good ground for concluding that where 
care is bestowed on the organization of such in- 
struction, and sufficient time is allowed for impart- 
ing it, it is of a nature to affect the conscience and 
influence the conduct of the children of whose daily 
training it forms a part.'' President Sharpless of 
Haverford College who has examined the English 
system and written upon it, pronounces the relig- 
ious feature on the whole successful. The United 
States Commissioner of Education, speaking in 
general, says, '^ While the average intellectual 
standard of the English elementarj^ schools (if both 
urban and rural schools be included) is not high, 
the moral quality is positive and pervasive. This 
is a very natural consequence of the part which the 
Church has taken in the establishment and mainte- 
nance of the schools. It is further attributable to 
the influence of the training colleges, through 
which the majority of the head teachers have 
passed, which colleges being denominational schools 
are deeply penetrated with the religious spirit. 
The attitude of the government accords with this 
spirit." 

16 



242 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

It is much then to know that Germany and En- 
gland, the two leading nations of the world, per- 
haps, the one the most powerful on the land, the 
other on the water, the one predominant in the in- 
tellectual world, the other in the commercial world, 
that these leading nations are deeply impressed 
with the value of the moral and religious element 
as a vital part of all education, and that they esteem 
Christian public education as more valuable and 
feasible than the sectarian form, and that they have 
obtained valuable results in the practical applica- 
tion of their opinions. But it is not less important 
to notice that these results are not as far-reaching 
and profound as the pre-eminent nature of religion 
would lead us to expect, if it were rightly and 
fully applied, and that apparently we have in the 
experience of these peoples only glimpses of the 
results that should be obtained in any adequate so- 
lution of the problem. At the same time, we no- 
tice that few if any thorough and systematic efforts, 
on a broad practical scale, have ever been made to 
work out and state and teach the vital and compre- 
hensive substance of denominational teachings ; to 
determine one that is not only safe and satisfactory 
but also full of the utmost aggressive power. 

If only separated education is possible, the use 
of this common essence will be of great importance 
in bringing the religious half into more vital rela- 
tions with the secular half But if we go farther, 
and make religious instruction a part of general 
education, the use of this general essence will be 
necessary and indispensable. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SUBSTANCE OF KELIGION IN EDUCATION. 

AN AGGRESSIVE SUBSTANCE. 

FUNDAMENTAL then in any broad, adequate 
solution of the problem of bringing the relig- 
ious element efficiently to bear in the general edu- 
cation of the world, and of making it everywhere 
the most effective and productive element in educa- 
tion, is working out a certain underh ing essence 
or general substance of religion. This essence, 
while not sectarian, should be that on which the 
religious teaching of each denomination is based, 
and should be capable of being developed b}^ each 
denomination into its own particular form. It 
should be not merely safe and satisfactory, but also 
rich, fruitful and full of aggressive power. It must 
not only be full of higher power, but also touch the 
general and material life of the people at every 
possible point. 

Almost all of the practical attempts which have 
been made to determine and use this general sub- 
stance of religion, have been rather in the line of 
paring down existing doctrines to a residuum so 
small and general as to be commonly acceptable, 
rather than in the direction of searching out an 
essence, which can be developed and extended, and 

(243) 



244 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

which, while including the essence of the best doc- 
trine, comes in aggressive contact with all life. 
They have been more negative than positive in 
their nature. Thus in German schools, the unsec- 
tarian substance consists, as we have seen, of cer- 
tain limited parts of the catechism ; in English 
schools, it is confined to the Lord's Praj^er and 
Apostles' Creed. If we go to Thomas Arnold, 
perhaps the most successful of all those modern 
educators who have tried to make religion effective 
in general education, and read his sermons and 
letters and the statements of his pupils, it is re- 
markable how few we find of general principles of 
religious truth, which others can transfer and use 
in their educational work, how few illustrations 
and methods of religious instruction which are def- 
inite and yet generally available. Yet as a result 
of the various practical experiments that have been 
made, and in the light of the large amount of dis- 
cussion of the problem in recent years, and in view 
of the progress which denominations have made in 
fraternal spirit, and in the recognition of the value 
of that common basis of religious fact and feeling 
which underlies the various sectarian teachings, it 
seems possible to construct a more extended, ag- 
gressive and flexible essence. Certain features of 
it at least seem evident. 

A. A FIRST ESSENCE. 
I. A COMMON FACT AND ACT. 

In the first place, a certain fundamental fact is 



EELIGIOK IN EDUCATIOK. 245 

common to all religions. There is a recognition 
and a union of the life with vast external Power, 
known or unknown, or but partially known. All 
men are to some extent religious. The use of this 
fundamental religious fact is the basis of all life. 
All men who live on and work, to this extent rec- 
ognize this Power and to this extent are religious. 
Men who use this fact reluctantl}", and in the most 
limited way possible, from whatever misconception, 
are those whom we call irreligious ; but all lives 
must necessarily have some use of this religious 
fact as a foundation stone. Keligious souls, how- 
ever, use this fundamental fact as universally and 
intensely as possible, so as to make it as fruitful as 
possible. In the power to do so, its possessors rec- 
ognize their most precious endowment. 

II. COIVmON FEELING. 

In the second place, there is a certain fundamental 
feeling common to all religious life. Reverence, 
adoration, spiritual love have in their essence no 
contradictory species. Even if they differ in some 
form of outward expression, they fit together es- 
sentially. A contemplation of vast external Power 
in its various blessed values, and the union of the 
life with it arouse the same emotions everywhere. 
These same emotions carry all denominations for- 
ward in their utmost development of creed and cere- 
mony. The same fundamental religious fact is 
surrounded by the same glow of deeply realized 
value. 



246 A NE^y life ik educatiok, 

III. COMMON ACTIVITIES. 

In the third place, the practical religious conduct 
and activities of life are essentially the same in all 
civilized countries. Out of union with the vast, 
external Power, springs communion with it of some 
sort, an utterance to it in spoken word or in the 
silent language of the soul. Out of it spring the 
same practical duties and privileges in the world 
about us. Christianity at work is the same in Scot- 
land and in America. The sisters of charity and 
the Christian Commission did the same work in our 
civil war. The converted African and the con- 
verted Hindoo gladly enter upon the same broader 
range of usefulness. In actioji, there is but one 
fatherhood of God and but one brotherhood of man. 

Thus all forms of religion and of life itself are 
based on one fundamental fact ; all denominations 
are carried forward to their utmost development of 
individual details by the same general emotions ; 
all forms of religion, worthy of the name, manifest 
themselves in the same species of practical activity. 
It is thus possible to distinguish a common essence 
in all forms of specific religious teaching and work. 
It also seems clearly possible to give aid in the 
schools in imparting this essence practically to all 
who desire any religious training. It seems feasi- 
ble to impress the fundamental religious fact, to cul- 
tivate religious feeling, to develop religious action 
with offence to none and value to all really benefi- 
cial organizations, and with immense fruitage in the 
general life of the people. 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 247 

USE OF THE FIRST ESSENCE. 

Whatever aids the mind to appreciate the fact 
that values exist in unknown or partially known 
forces is a preparation for the apprehension of the 
fundamental fact of religion. A writer in a recent 
number of the New England Magazine,^ in discuss- 
ing the question whether religion or a preparation 
for it can be taught in the public schools, makes 
a distinction between describable knowledge and 
appreciable knowledge. Describable knowledge is 
that which can be stated in definite terms. It can 
be analyzed and expressed in terms of the analysis, 
the laws of falling bodies being an example. Ap- 
preciable knowledge is that the value of which is 
felt but cannot be definitely explained or stated, as 
is often the case with noble or heroic action. He 
shows that the power to appreciate unanalj'zable 
knowledge is in children, and that the cultivation of 
it develops idealism and puts the mind in the right 
attitude to assimilate spiritual truth and develop 
religiously. 

He next mentions the profound influence in his 
own life of a stated hour given, by a teacher in his 
childhood, to the idealization of the characters of 
pupils, by informal readings and discussions of 
English classics. His experience was that '* to 
read of such a perfect gentleman as Col. Newcome 
gives one an impulse to be a gentleman. Being a 
gentleman is more enticing to a bo}^ for a season 
than being rich." Under the influence of the noble 
pictures found in literature and the inspiration of 



248 A NEW LIFE m EDUCATION. 

the best poetry^ feeling a charm which they never 
thought to analyze^ boys experienced the stirring 
of higher emotions, and were moved to speak, and 
later on to act* Here we have appreciation of noble 
influences, not needing or capable of analysis, we 
have higher feelings aroused and action developed 
into spontaneity. All such culture is a preparation 
for religious training, in fact it is an adumbration 
of training in the general substance of religion. 

But why should not this substance itself be thus 
taught ? Why should not the child be brought to 
appreciate the vast unlimited Power that makes for 
righteousness, to feel a deeply reverential yet famil- 
iar and personal love for this Power, and to speak 
and act in accordance with this knowledge and 
feeling ? This would give that common basis on 
which all specific religious agencies work and that 
general material which all use, and in so doing 
would perform a valuable service to the church and 
world alike. Every one acquainted with children 
must have noticed the deeply religious vein in 
them. Educators have made mention of this again 
and again. As one of them expresses it "' The 
child lives in a world . . . where faith, hope and 
love beckon to realms of beauty and delight. The 
spiritual and moral truths which are to become the 
very life-breath of his soul, he apprehends mystic- 
ally, not logically. Heaven lies about him ; he 
lives in wonderland and feels the thrill of awe as 
naturally as he looks with wide open eyes. . . . 
He wants to feel that he is the child of God, of the 



BELIGION IK EBUCATIOK, 249 

infinitely good and all wonderful." Compayre tells 
of a father ,2 who, impressed by reading Rousseau's 
Emile, and by the statement that children were not 
sufficiently developed to be taught religious truth 
till they had reached the age of eighteen, lived in 
seclusion with his son and brought him up so that 
at the age of ten the boy had neither read nor heard 
the name of God. " But then his mind found what 
had been denied it. The sun which he saw rise 
each morning seemed the all powerful benefactor of 
whom he felt the need. He soon formed the habit 
of going at dawn to the garden, to pay homage to 
that god that he had made for himself. His father 
surprised him one day, and showed him his error by 
teaching him that all the fixed stars are so many 
suns distributed in space. But such was then the 
disappointment and the grief of the child deprived 
of his worship, that the father, overcome, acknowl- 
edged to him that there was a God, the Creator of 
the heavens and the earth." As Froebel has said, 
'' We do not give early boyhood enough credit for 
religious power as well as for mental power gener- 
ally." 

Yery young children have no keener delight 
than in hearing stories containing religious truth 
which they can assimilate in their own way, in ask- 
ing questions relating to such subjects and express- 
ing their own religious ideas and feelings generally. 
But, too often, the child, finding himself not under- 
stood and even ridiculed, at length ceases to speak 
and act in a way to attract notice, and thus comes 



250 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

to hide and stifle his most precious feelings. Given 
influences which, instead of suppressing his powers, 
will carry him on to an ever clearej* appreciation of 
things not seen, an ever fuller expression of relig- 
ious feeling, and an ever more earnest action, who 
can measure the value to himself and to the world ? 

Given a teacher who from long and wide experi- 
ence thoroughly understands young and tender 
religious natures, and can feed them with the right 
material and encourage them into right expression, 
who will not be benefitted thereby ? Froebel gives 
instances of the religious development of little 
children under such influences, and all who have 
had opportunities of observing these influences at 
work in wholesome and adapted ways, must have 
observed valuable results both in individuals and 
in companies of children organized together. 

The writer knows of a boy of naturally perverse 
temperament, but who had the tendency common to 
children to talk on religious subjects when not dis- 
couraged therein, and who after many such talks 
said decisively one day, though yet little more than 
four years of age, '' I am going to be a good boy 
now," and whose character was entirely changed 
thereafter. Froebel tells of a boy who, scarcely 
six years old, asked every evening of his parents 
taking him to bed, " Please teach me a prayer," 
and traces how from this his spiritual nature was 
developed. 

An interesting article recently published in the 
Century Magazine^ gives the experience of a teacher 



BELIGIOK IN EDUCATIOISr. 251 

in the moral and religious training of the " Bad 
Boys' School." This was a 'school in New York 
City composed of about one hundred boys, most of 
whom had been expelled from Sunday-schools as 
incorrigible. To encourage the work done in this 
school, a friend of the teacher offered '' prizes for 
those boys who could report a certain number of 
good, or kind, or noble deeds, which they had them- 
selves witnessed, or heard, or read about, either at 
the present time or in past history." The object 
was first, to see what in the mind of each *' consti- 
tutes a truly brave and noble action," and second, 
to '' train them not to find it in warlike or showy 
deeds, but in acts of loving self-sacrifice often never 
known or recognized, in little ways of kindness and 
self-denial." The success of the method was extra- 
ordinary. The teacher reports, '' I am gaining a 
valuable knowledge of boy life and boys' needs that 
I never dreamed of before." When the time came 
for reading the records of noble deeds collected by 
various members of the school, such was the inter- 
est that " most of the boys crowded around my 
feet, some climbed into the timbers and braces 
above me." '' To my surprise, the first prize, a 
good watch, fell to a boy who last year was taken 
by my sexton by the scruff of the neck — a ragged, 
bare-footed boy — and landed off the church grounds, 
and bade never to come back, he was so trouble- 
some." Many of the ^' records " telling stories of 
Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Ralph Abercrombie and 
John Maynard, and like incidents observed in the 



252 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

daily life of the narrator , showed a true moral feel- 
ing and appreciation of nobility. What was more 
valuable stilly the very act of collecting and nar- 
rating these deeds, had aroused into activity the 
better nature of the boys, as was made evident by 
quaint moral reflections and exhorations, inter- 
spersed or appended. 

This somewhat isolated case seems to be an ex- 
ample of the way in which both the moral and relig- 
ious natures of children can be developed in essen- 
tial, fundamental respects. As the child becomes 
able, let him collect instances of intense spiritual life 
as well as of elevated moral conduct. Let other 
instances be set before him so as to stimulate him to 
emulation of them. Moral and religious instruction 
of this kind in some limited way is often given in 
kindergarten schools. Its value as so given is for- 
cibly shown in such instances as that of San Fran- 
cisco, where of nine thousand children taken from 
the criminal and poverty-stricken quarters of the 
city, and '' w^ho have gone through the free kinder- 
gartens of the Golden Gate Association, but one 
was found to have been arrested after careful in- 
quiry and years of watchfulness over police-court, 
prison and house of refuge records." Because its 
spirit thus fits in well with early moral and relig- 
ious instruction, the kindergarten is being adopted 
as the first stage in mission work, as at Beirut, 
Syria, and in India, and is found to be most effect- 
ive. If preliminary instruction moral and spiritual 
in tone and essence is thus valuable in specific re- 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 253 

ligious work in foreign lands, why not in the home 
land also ? If a limited and accidental essence is 
thus valuable, why should not a carefully under- 
stood and thoroughly applied essence be still more 
valuable ? 

B. ESSENCE DEVELOPED INTO SUBSTANCE. 

We thus find that a certain primal fact, and a 
certain common feeling and practical activity 
constitute a general first essence of religion, and 
that important results are obtained by its use. 
But beside this first essence, a further essence is 
possible. The first essence may be developed 
into a more general substance of religion. In the 
child the fundamental fact and feeling and action 
are not definitely separated. The religious per- 
ception and the glow of religious feeling dwell 
together in the soul, forming this first essence. 
But as the mind matures, the elements of this 
primal essence may be separated. Each element 
may be used and re-used to the utmost, the values 
of each may be seen more and more definitely in 
all aspects, each may be applied more widely and 
precisely. All may be combined to form a fuller, 
richer and more comprehensive substance of relig- 
ious life and thought, which each denomination and 
each individual can clothe upon as it or he sees fit. 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RELIGIOUS ACT. 

For instance, the fundamental religious act may 
be separated from the fundamental religious feel- 



254 A NEW LIFE IlSr EDUCATION. 

ing. It may be analyzed and extended. In all its 
new values, it may be converted into a fuller and 
richer religious feeling, and into more productive 
activities. 

I. IT IS THE SIMPLEST ACT. 

This primal religious act is seen to be the sim- 
plest act of the soul, and one of which all are alike 
capable. Loving is by comparison a rare and 
high-wrought mood of the soul. Belief, direct 
union of the life with vast eternal power, requires 
no complex-acting and powerful mind ; indeed, to 
some extent it is a property of all minds in spite 
of themselves. 

II. THE MOST FUNDAMENTALLY CONSTRUCTIVE ACT. 

It is not only the simplest, it is also the most 
fundamental constructive act of the soul. It is the 
indispensable basis of all other goodness and 
growth in this goodness. It is stimulative of all 
those higher processes which make life complete 
and enduring. It is like breathing, simple and 
easy, yet the basis of all the vital processes. The 
effect of it is well shown by Paul in the 5th chap- 
ter of Romans, whether we regard the description 
as a part of natural or revealed religion. '' By 
faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." Thence we have access into grace, 
whence result experience, hope, and '^ the love of 
God " ^' shed abroad in our hearts." In like man- 
ner in the 11th chapter of Hebrews it is shown 



EELIGION IN EDUCATION. 265 

that various kinds of courage, moral, physical, 
spiritual, clinging, aggressive, all in their highest 
types spring from a free and full union of the soul 
with External Power. 

The primal religious act is seen to have the same 
effect on bodies of men, that it has on the individ- 
ual. Roman education at first had this essential 
religious element in it along with military f raining, 
and as a result, as Compayre expresses it, were 
produced " men the most robust, the most courag- 
eous, the best disciplined, the most patriotic that 
ever lived," but when in the time of Augustus re- 
ligion had so died out amongst this people that 
they began to inscribe on their tombstones such 
words as, " To eternal sleep," " To perpetual rest," 
their civilization was doomed. English deism made 
Sir Robert Walpole possible. The Wesleyan revival 
made William Pitt and English dominion possible. 
A constant sterling faith has made Scotland great 
since the time of the Reformation. 

III. ITS UNIVERSALITY. 

Not only is this the most simple and construct- 
ive act, it is, in some germinal form at least, the 
most widespread in man's nature. It is a part of 
every useful power which man possesses. Activ- 
ities so simple as eating and walking contain an 
element of faith-union with the External Power. 
To eat is to believe that the world will endure ; to 
take a step is to suppose that the foot will find a 



256 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

resting place. The same is true of all the other 
practical activities of life. 

So also for the faculties and powers that make 
up man's inner being. Memory is based on the 
continuance and reliability of power outside of us. 
Reason makes all its calculations with reference to 
a stable future. It is acting in constant accord 
with external power. Imagination, departing from 
the seen, trusts in the unexplored depths and rich- 
nesses of diversity, that are in this same power. 

The human hand has been justly admired as a 
marvellous instrument. It has been called ^^ the 
most wonderful tool in any workshop. . . . No 
instrument devised by man compares with it for 
complication. It is a hammer, a vise, a forceps, a 
hook, a spring, a weight; it pushes, it draws in; 
the fingers alone contain elements of all the tools a 
sculptor requires in modelling. From the elbow 
to the digital extremities its movements are pro- 
duced by nearly fifty muscles. So complicated is 
the cordage of a human hand that expert anato- 
mists can hardly keep in remembrance its intricate 

mechanism It is a wonder of wonders." 

But every joint and curve of the hand expresses 
union with the partially known, or the distant, or 
even the unknown. Its very complexity and per- 
fection of organization only show how complete is 
that trust, and how thoroughly organized it is as a 
part of every practical activity. 

The eye, not less richly organized, and moving 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 257 

swiftly in all directions, is an example of how 
rapid and spontaneous this faith-union can be. 

But hand and eye alike, are but instruments of 
the soul, the one for action, the other for percep- 
tion. Their qualities are but a dim reflex of the 
qualities of the soul within. The completeness of 
their belief in and dependence on the unknown or 
partially known, is but a dim reflex of the univer- 
sality of these qualities in the rest of the nature, 
that part which they obey ; they visibly exhibit 
how widespread is the primal religious act in the 
whole range of man's being. 

EXTENDED USE OF THE PRIMAL RELIGIOUS ACT. 

If the primal act is so simple, so constructive, 
and so widespread, we see how important is the 
matter of developing it, so as to give man's nature 
a complete spiritual life. If it is a simple act, its 
development, being rightly undertaken, ought not 
to be difficult. If it is fundamentally constructive, 
its development ought to produce the most valu- 
able results, in whatever area of the being it goes 
on. If the primal act is present, at least in some 
germinal form, in all parts of the nature, these re- 
sults should be produced in every area, begetting a 
thorough and valuable organization. 

If the fundamental religious act come to be real- 
ized in this wa}^, and used in the most aggressive 
and complete fashion, its use will not degenerate 
into any mere utilitarianism, but will arouse a new 
and more personal love for that Almighty Power 
17 



258 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

which vivifies all, it will arouse a deeper sense of 
personal, absolute obligation ; in other words, a 
deeper and fuller habit of childlike worship. 

The mind also is not prejudiced for or against 
any specific form of religious worship, but is given 
a general preparation for all. A common culture 
of faith is bestowed, which the Protestant can com- 
plete into faith in Christ, or the Roman Catholic 
into faith-union with the church, or the Jew into 
faith in Jehovah, or the Agnostic into faith in prac- 
tical action. We do not here surrender protestant 
Christianity as the complete and final form of relig- 
ion. For we believe that the fundamental fact 
and act so inculcated will tend to extend and com- 
plete itself into the best final form. Having truly 
realized it even in an elementary way merely, men 
will try to perfect it into the highest fruitage of 
practical result and glow of feeling. Catholics and 
agnostics are as likely to be brought to realize the 
superiority of this form of religion and gladly ac- 
cept it, in this way as in any other, where all take 
a common basis and build upon it side by side in 
minds unbiased, and yet eager to achieve the ut- 
most benefit. 

THE WHOLE DEVELOPED ESSENCE. 

If in this or similar ways, the other elements of 
the primeval essence of religion, religious feeling, 
and religious activities, be also analj^zed and 
wrought out and extended in all aspects of value, 
we shall obtain, as a result, a general developed 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 259 

essence or substance of religion and theologies. 
All will be true of it as a whole, that has been said 
of the extended use of the fundamental religious 
act. 
C. DEVELOPMENT OF A GENERAL IDEALISM. 
I. GERMS OF IDEALISM. 

Among material things and symbols there exist 
relations to the external, altruisms even. The 
sentence of the poet is full of strength because 
each word does not stand by itself, as in agglutin- 
ative speech, but has powerful relations with other 
words. Science progresses by adding outside 
forces and substances to a given material. The 
chemist j,oins heat or electricity, or new elements, 
to given ones, and gets his valuable laws of com- 
bination. In mathematics even, this altruism is 
the source of developing power. In Algebra in 
completing the square, outside quantity is intro- 
duced, and by its aid an apparently complex re- 
lation is seen to be but a simple one used in repe- 
tition. The same principle is illustrated every- 
where throughout mathematics. Art is effective 
in proportion as it puts given material in union 
with a great external. The best art is full of 
touches of the infinite, whether these be vistas in a 
forest, a wide-winged sunset, or an eye full of 
fathomless meaning. 

Particularly are all living, growing things joined 
with power which is outside of themselves and only 
dimly known. The more highly organized they 



260 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

are, the more complete is their union with this 
power. The instinct of the migrating bird, grasps 
the Torrid Zone across the thousands of miles 
stretching between Greenland and the equator. 
The rich life juices of plants, packed into buds and 
bulbs in autumn, and ready to leap up and seize 
the warmth of spring, seems to lay hold of this 
springtime through months of cold and storms. 
The oak in midwinter is visibly grasping next 
summer's sunshine with its hundred bare arms. 

Thus among material things, a certain altruism 
and a valuable relation to outside things and forces 
exist. There is also a tendency for these outgoing 
relations to extend and complete themselves. This 
suggests that these relations, when fully under- 
stood, may help supply a general idealism to our 
present vast stores of concrete knowledge. They 
may go far to furnish that ideal upper half which 
we have seen that the new education, as yet, in 
great measure lacks. If rightly developed, they 
may form a basis for that upper half of idealism, 
w^hich our present material civilization also needs. 

The growing materialism of the age is forcibly 
illustrated in the fact that for every two pounds of 
bread which the American people eat, more than 
one pound of iron^ is assimilated into our civiliza- 
tion. In one of the towns of Penns3dvania is a 
steam hammer weighing 125 tons ; its striking face 
is two feet broad and eight feet long. It rises and 
falls in a special tower. The huge mallet of 600 
cubic feet of iron, drops not only by its own weight, 



BELIGIOK IK EDUCATION. 261 

but is also thrust down by the direct propelling 
power of steam. Man seems to be making those 
tools and instruments which shall beat his ideals 
down into the earth. But all materials and instru- 
ments, when viewed in broad enough relations, are 
seen to be but parts of a general idealism. If all 
the iron in our mountains were spread out over the 
land as railroads and telegraphs and other solid 
structures, all would but form an adequate frame- 
work for the kingdom of God. 

As soon as an object or a fact is considered in re- 
lation to the infinite it is idealized. Idealism is a 
wide grasping of forms and relations which are del- 
icate and inclusive, yet steel-like in their reality ; 
and, at the same time, a giving of due place to the 
unknown or partially known. The very essence of 
it then, is a recognition of the wide-spreading altru- 
ism, of the mutual organizing relations among sym- 
bols and things alike. 

II. CULMINATION OF IDEALISM IN RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 

Of especial interest is the relation of man to 
things outside of himself, culminating in his relig- 
ious life. What is man in the presence of the 
ver}^ large and distant, without joining the tele- 
scope to himself? What is he in the presence of 
the very small, without the microscope ? Civiliza- 
tion is being built up b}^ a union of each life with 
other lives, and the action of all in connection with 
tools and forces outside of mankind. Newton con- 
fining his attention to the surface of the earth 



262 A KEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

could not prove the law of gravitation. But when 
he went out be3^ond himself so to speak, out be- 
yond the world in which we live, and included the 
moon, and then the sun and the planets, in his con- 
templation, the law became clearly evident. Hu- 
man progress ever consists of gaining valuable re- 
sults by union of the near and immediate with the 
distant and foreign. The growth of the soul is but 
a union of it with a larger and larger external. 
Justice, courtes}^, family affections, the various por- 
tions of the love called human brotherhood, are but 
stages in the process ; all culminate and are in- 
cluded in a loving recognition of a divine father- 
hood. 

Here then we find an altruistic and spiritual law, 
beginning with simple concrete things and sym- 
bols, and going on to the highest forms of exist- 
ence. It irresistibly draws the soul on, and cul- 
minates in its union with God, as an intense sum- 
mation of the essence of all, and including and gov- 
erning all other external. The soul rises and ex- 
tends its existence till this becomes "" a fervid life 
in God and with God, in all circumstances and con- 
ditions of life and mind." 

III. IDEALISM AND RELIGION DEVELOP EACH OTHER. 

Thus we find suggestions at least, of a general 
scheme of idealism, culminating in spiritual life. 
Beginning with limited and even mechanical extern- 
alism, it rises into altruism, and thence into com- 
plete religious life. On the one hand, religion is a 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 263 

sublimated part of it ; on the other, all its parts 
are but suggestions or details of religion. 

Being so related, idealism and religion should 
aid in developing each other. Idealism prepares 
the way and puts the mind in the right attitude 
for religion. It is full of local altruisms and lim- 
ited uses of unknown powers, and it exhibits nu- 
merous practical values flowing therefrom. By the 
multitude of its suggestions, it draws the mind on 
to grasp a higher spiritual life. First it suggests, 
then it typifies, and finally it manifoldly demon- 
strates* 

On the other hand, the religious life, once real- 
ized, extends and develops idealism including in 
the latter the moral life. Justice, honest}^, charity, 
and other moral laws are at once marked off as but 
separate parts or details of religion, and are in- 
stantly and emphatically demonstrated. All parts 
of the law of love are enforced into commanding 
certainty. Full of the religious spirit, the soul also 
perceives ideal forms and relations existing all 
about it, or creates other and new forms of these 
delicate but inclusive relations. Altruisms appear 
or are generated everywhere ; altruisms among 
things, among symbols, among men ; altruisms 
finite and altruisms infinite ; human and divine al- 
truisms, itself being but a supreme, sublimated 
altruism, the flower and fruit of all. 

Not only should idealism and religion help cre- 
ate each other, they should help create the high- 
est type of each other. Idealism enriches and 



264 A NEW li:fe ik edijcatiok. 

broadens religion ^ builds it up with supporting 
illustrations and proofs^ fills it with details, opens 
new fields for its application. Reciprocally, relig- 
ion prevents idealism from stopping short in any 
near area^ either of things or of men ; in any form 
of sensuous art^ or crude philanthropy. It sug- 
gests an altruism that is never complete, but rather 
is full of ever new vistas. 

Finally, as cannot too often be insisted upon, the 
effect of all should be but to re4nforce the original 
childlike attitude of worship. Idealism, by the 
multitude of its suggestions all leading the soul on 
to the fundamental religious state, by its final om- 
nipresence, makes this attitude more constant. 
Likewise the more we develop and use the essence 
of religion, the more absolute its value becomes, the 
more transcendental its nature is to us, and the 
more childlike is our attitude in its presence. In 
all its practical values we realize that we have but 
the merest glimpses of its transcendental nature 
breaking feebly and locally into view. The more 
rational it is, the more wonderful also ; the more 
practical, the more marvelous ; the more of reason 
it contains, the more of mystery and promise. Its 
extended use, as well as the use of all forms of 
idealism, should lead to a profound, unquestioning 
faith ; one that thinks not of causes and reasons, 
but on the contrary is as arbitrary and sovereign in 
all its relations, as are the laws of life and growth 
themselves, as they come sweeping out of the na- 
ture of God. 



EELIGIOK IK EDUCATIOK. 265 

PRACTICAL ASPECTS. 
I. ATTITUDE OF AGNOSTICS. 

One of the two leading Agnostics of this genera- 
tion says^ '' The great deeds of the philosophers 
have been less the fruit of their intellect than of 
the direction of that intellect by an eminently re- 
ligious tone of mind. Truth has yielded herself 
rather to their patience, their love, their single- 
heartedness and their self-denial, than to their 
logical acumen." " True science and true religion 
are twin sisters." " Science prospers exactly in 
proportion as it is religious." The other of them 
quotes these remarks with approbation. 

One of their followers writing in the Educa- 
tional Beview^^ expresses a belief in the substance 
of religion and outlines a s^^stem of religious edu- 
cation which he regards as of the highest value. 
He desires that his child be taught "reverence," 
" faithfulness " and " faith " toward " that unknown 
reality which is the most real thing." Apparently 
then education in the primal essence of religion is 
regarded as desirable by agnostics so-called, and we 
feel that it will be of utmost value to them and the 
world. The religion which thej^ profess, meager as 
it is, carried to its logical conclusion gives Christ- 
ianity. 

II. ATTITUDE OF DENOMINATIONS. 

With respect to the Roman Catholic Church, as 
one writer has expressed it, " a movement is now 



266 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATIONc 

going on in the Church of Rome itself, under the 
guidance of Leo XIII., looking to the harmoniz- 
ing of its practice and its teaching with the basic 
principles of our free institutions." If with its 
well-known, deep-seated conviction of the impor- 
tance of a vital union of religion with education, 
the Roman Church can adapt itself to our present 
unreligious public schools, it surely ought to adapt 
itself to these in case they taught a general es- 
sence of religion. Cardinal Manning signed the 
report of the British Commission approving the 
system of unsectarian religious education in En- 
gland. The Catholic schools in Georgia,^ though 
public schools and under the joint control of both 
church and state, are opened with the reading of 
the English Bible and with prayer. • The wonder- 
ful flexibility and late liberality of this church are 
forcibly illustrated in the two facts, that recently 
a famous Baptist divine preached from a Catholic 
pulpit in Newark, while, a little later on, a Catholic 
congregation in Long Island City heard mass in a 
Baptist church, their own having burned down. 

It is true that when the New York Synod of 
the Presbyterian Church a few years ago^ adopted 
a resolution urging the '' incorporation into state 
and secular education of moral and religious truth, 
founded on the following basal propositions : a 
personal God ; individual responsibility to him ; 
immortality ; a future judgment ; and the Ten Com- 
mandments, as interpreted by the Sermon on the 
Mount," the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 267 

did not give their assent. To the committee which 
was appointed by the S^^nod to inquire as to '' the 
practicability of securing a union of different de- 
nominations on such a basis," the Catholic Arch- 
bishop of New York replied through his Yicar- 
general, '' We could be satisfied with nothing less 
than teaching our whole faith." 

But it should be remembered that the Cath- 
olic Church is a very extensive and complex or- 
ganization. It is partly autocratic, partly oli- 
garchic, and partly democratic. The nature of 
this church has always largely partaken of the 
character of the country in which it has existed. 
In time, the popular element is sure to control 
in this democratic country. It is scarcely too 
much to say that it does substantiall}^ govern the 
church in this land to-day. In spite of the almost 
superhuman efforts of the Catholic priesthood, 
two-thirds of Catholic' children are sent to the 
public schools instead of to the parochial schools, 
simply because their parents find that their chil- 
dren get a superior education in the public schools. 
If by incorporating the essence of religion in our 
system of school instruction a clearly better edu- 
cation results, there is reason to believe that the 
body of the Catholic people will assent to the 
change. 

In this connection, attention should be again 
called to the importance of teaching an essence of 
religion which shall be, not merely satisfactory, but 
full of aggressive power. If people are merely not 



268 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

offended, and no marked fruit is produced, a few 
jars will be likely to overthrow the sj^stem. But 
if the system be full of aggressive power, and yield 
a large fruitage, ifc will sustain itself not merely 
in spite of jars, but also against determined attacks. 
This would be true even with a united opposition. 
But in this country the clergy of the Catholic 
Church are not a unit. They are clearly divided 
into two wings, the conservative led b}^ Archbishop 
Corrigan, and the liberal led by Archbishop Ire- 
land. A large part of the hierarchy of the Roman 
Church has come to realize that the church must 
assimilate, or adapt itself to, every great upward 
movement, or disappear. The forces of modern ■ 
civilization are too swift, dynamic and coherent to 
be resisted ; rather, they are to be sought out and 
used^ as an aid. One of these forces is the best 
possible system of public education. 

Protestant denominations are already fully aware 
of the value of such general education in re- 
ligion. The Board of Education of the Presby- 
terian Church for instance, in its semi-centenary 
report to the General Assembly in 1869, says, 
"• We do not want them [the public schools] to be 
sectarian, but we do insist that the Bible shall be 
read in them as the great text book of moral 
truth. The school committees and teachers should 
carefully select books for the use of children which 
will inspire pure morals, high motives and the 
fundamental principles of religious truth, which 
are the best heritage of a Christian nation." 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 269 

That this opinion continues and has even strength- 
ened and developed is shown by the action of the 
New York S^aiod of this denomination already re- 
ferred to. As showing the breadth and depth of 
this feeling in other denominations, it is a fact of 
deep significance that representatives of the Jew- 
ish Church in Xew York, both in its orthodox and 
radical branches, endorsed heartily the general 
plan of the Sjmod stated above, taking some ex- 
ception to the form of the last proposition only. 

In teaching such an essence practical difficul- 
ties affecting the relations of denominations would 
doubtless arise at first. But we are the most prac- 
tical people in the world, and notwithstanding the 
great number of our denominations and perhaps 
because of it, have more of truly fraternal religious 
feeling than exists an3^where else. All such diffi- 
culties should be overcome in the face of the im- 
mense value of the results to all forms of religious 
activity. Churches have flourished in all lands and 
epochs in proportion to the amount of general re- 
ligious feeling and interest among the people. If 
practically all the youth in the land should receive 
so much and such kinds of religious instruction, as 
would prevent the concrete from becoming a sub- 
stitute for religious feeling and lofty idealism ; if 
practically^ all should obtain such a grasp of the 
vital essence of religion, as would prevent the in- 
dividual while yet in youth from drifting back or 
being shocked by some superficial incident into 
skepticism, who can measure the value to every 



270 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

form of religious activity. If in addition to this, 
practically all should obtain a general realization 
of the positive and aggressive value of religion, 
who can measure the value to the general life of 
the nation as well as to all forms of ecclesiastical 
activity ? 

Even if it be not possible for our general system 
of state schools thus to recognize and teach the 
essence of religion, it is possible for our denomina- 
tional schools to teach this broader essence, and 
thus bring themselves into a more vital and effect- 
ive relation to the life of the nation. Teachers 
trained in them, by their very spirit and attitude, 
would do a more efficient, elevating work in the 
public schools. The sooner this broad essence be 
first carefully wrought out and effectively taught 
in our denominational institutions, in a way satis- 
factory to those of varied beliefs attending them, 
and with recognized general power, the sooner it 
will come to be adopted by the schools in general. 
A field of most useful work here lies open before 
sectarian schools. 

III. RELATION TO EDUCATION AS IT IS. 

Wherever this broad essence is incorporated and 
rightly developed as a part of the training and 
culture of the young, it will supply the needs and 
advance the power of modern education in every 
desired way. It could be taught in connection 
with the various subjects of study, that is perva- 
sively, as opportunity occurred. It would thus 



EELIGION IN EDUCATION. 271 

supply that ideal upper half which the new educa- 
tion so often and so sadly lacks. By its aid, the 
spiritual worth of all knowledge would everywhere 
appear. It would show both the direct practical 
and the transcendental value of every true fact to 
be unlimited. 

It could also be taught as a distinct part of the 
work, in an hour set .apart with proper regulations. 
This hour would be given to instructive and stim- 
ulative talks, to the presentation of the results of 
observation, reading, and experience, and to the 
discussion of them ; and at an advanced stage to 
strict text-book work also, on the essence of re- 
ligion, the precise nature and scope of which would 
vary according to locality and many relativities, 
but which, we have tried to show, can be com- 
prehensive and full of aggressive power under all 
circumstances. The Bible could be used as an aid 
in making clear and vivid this general essence of 
religion. We are sure that the more that it is 
used thus and in so far, the less general objection 
there will be to its employment. The instruction 
of this hour would form a final deductive, summa- 
tion course for which all other courses and subjects 
of study would be but preliminary and desultory. 
Everj^ part of knowledge would become related 
and applicable to ever^^ other part, and all parts 
would be reciprocally multiplicative. All after 
work and study becomes a mere filling in of de- 
tails. As Froebel says, religious education gives 
to the matter of all education '^a universal form." 



272 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

^^ With religious education, which unites theoret- 
ical and practical education, by offering to the in- 
tellect the view of the first principle of the uni- 
verse, and bj offering to the will, a revelation of 
the divine purpose- in creation as the ultimate 
guide for all practical action, education ends.'' 

IV. RELATION TO THE WORLD AS IT IS. 

This general religious instruction, cultivating 
fche religious spirit in children, and giving them, as 
they mature, a grasp of the broad common-sense 
essence of all theology, would not only be useful 
in education but also of direct value to the world in 
its present stage of development. It would go far 
to make, or at least to enable churches, schools and 
all elevating influences, that are at present limited 
in their work, to make that higher transformation 
for which the world is now ripe, as we have at- 
tempted to show in the first chapter. In our own 
land and in many other parts of the world exists a 
deep appreciation of the practical value of religion, 
and such education would be fitted to take this ap- 
preciation and develop it into something higher 
and more intense. 

Ex-Senator Ingalls, in a striking passage in a 
recent number of Harper''s Magazine,^ defines the 
attitude of the progressive business man of the 
West toward this vital subject. ''Ambition and 
cupidity are the ruling passions in new communi- 
ties. . . The concern for this world is much 
greater than for that which is to come. Religion 



BELIGION IN EDTJCATIOK. 273 

is conservative. The pioneer is radical. . . . 
His mind being inquisitive, its tendency is toward 
materialism and rationalism . . but he is rever- 
ent, tolerant, and devout. He recognizes religion 
as one of the great, beneficent forces of the uni- 
verse, an indispensable premise in the syllogism of 
human destiny, without which society would be a 
sophism and the soul of man a fallac3^" In other 
words, materialistic and rationalistic as the Ameri- 
can mind may be on some sides, it keenly appreci- 
ates the fundamental truth and value of religion. 
At the Congress of Religions held in Chicago in 
September, 1893, the large and deeply interested 
audiences showed '' a willingness to applaud any 
speaker who spoke with sincerity and eloquence 
on any subject. They have been quick to recognize 
the underlying principles which are part alike of 
all the faiths to which any great number of men are 
attached." In a recent powerful address before 
the Contemporary Club of Philadelphia, the view 
was expressed that Christianity has gone through 
three stages of development — the dogmatic, the 
ecclesiastical, and the evangelical, and has now 
entered upon a fourth stage, that of conduct, 
though in the last stage the essences of the first 
three are retained. 

In all these views and facts, is expressed the 
prevalent but somewhat vague appreciation of the 
practical value of the main principles of religion. 
" There has probably been no epoch in Christian 
history when the best intellects were more deeply 

18 



274 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

interested in religious questions than now ; when 
young men of early advantages and of education 
were more eager to know the truth," but this mere 
interest of itself results too often only in the vague, 
^' unformulated and unbaptized Christianity," of 
reasonably correct conduct. It is more negative 
than positive. There is a gap between it and the 
churches. It should be made definite and aggres- 
sive, and sent on to an earnest and glad completion 
of itself in an organized Christianity. If we can 
make this essence, now dimly appreciated, clear 
and explicit to all and develop it, multitudes, now 
living hesitating lives, will gladly go on to use it 
to the utmost, and will ultimately seek the aid of 
churches in so doing. 

In each age and among each people, the right 
route must be chosen from the prevalent life of 
the people up to the highest spiritual life. Paul 
is an example to us in this as in so much else. 
In addressing the Romans, he uses the legal es- 
sence of theology ; he takes the respect for law 
which was fundamental in the Homan mind, the 
sense of justice, and rises from it to the doctrines 
of salvation and complete spiritual life. Law 
and justice exist among us and, indeed, are eter- 
nal and inherent everywhere, hence the inspira- 
tion of this teaching of Paul is shown in its uni- 
versal application. But a more intensely prac- 
tical spirit also exists to-day than ever before. 
When that essence in religion, which is beyond 
reason, is laid bare in all its intensity of practical 



BELIGION IN EDUCATION. 275 

value, the spirit of this age has a new route up to 
the highest spiritual life. 

In the summer of 1893, M. Paul Bourget, a 
leading French author, on the occasion of his visit 
to this country, was interviewed by a reporter of 
the New York Herald, In response to the ques- 
tion, ''Are you a Christian ? " he answered without 
the slightest hesitation in the affirmative, and then 
went on to explain his position thus :— '' I have 
come to recognize that those men and women, who 
follow the teachings of the church, are, in a great 
measure, protected from the moral disasters which 
.... almost invariably follow when men and 
women allow themselves to be guided and swa3^ed 
by their senses, passions, and weaknesses. For 
many years I, like most young men in modern 
cities, was content to drift along in agnosticism, but 
I was brought to my senses at last, by the growing 
realization that there is in this life such a thing as 
responsibility for the influence we have upon 
others. I saw that the life of a man who simply 
said ' I don't know and not knowing I do the thing 
that pleases me,' was not only empty in itself and 
full of disappointment and suffering, but was a 
positive influence for evil upon the lives of others 
— upon w^omen, for instance, and one's friends. 
Since then my belief has grown firmer each year 
in the necessity of the Christian system for practi- 
cal happiness in this world." 

In the opinions thus expressed we find a hearty 
recognition of the practical value of the principles 



276 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION. 

of Christianity. That a recognition such as this 
even, is of the highest value to the world, no one 
can doubt. The novel which M. Bourget first wrote 
after he had abandoned his " drifting and comforta- 
ble belief in agnosticism and had come to recog- 
nize the necessity of adopting Christianity," en- 
titled " Le Disciple," is read by Gladstone once a 
year, who says he can forgive all the other books 
written by the author for the sake of this one. 
Let this first acceptance of Christianity become 
general, and let it be carried on and made to com- 
plete itself definitely and aggressively in an organ- 
ized Christianity, it will open the way to a general 
social and spiritual transformation of the world. 
That Christian fiber, that Christlike thought, and 
that Christlike vision, which are the material out 
of which a millenial world must be made, will be 
created everywhere. Given this fiber in abund- 
ance, new social measures and routes to reform 
will gradually appear, which are now invisible. 
Those which are now apparent, but seemingly im- 
practicable, will become practicable. In propor- 
tion as the sum total of Christlikeness in the world 
increases, all else will come. But above and be- 
yond all, the appreciation of the practical value of 
religion, loyally lived up to, will develop into a 
realization of its transcendental saving value. 

Arnold's method. 

We have said that the teacher who has most ef- 
fectively combined religious instruction with gen- 



RELIGION IN EDUCATION. 277 

eral education, is Thomas Arnold. It was his 
method to improve every opportunity to give gen- 
eral religious instruction and impressions, to all his 
pupils without any sectarian bias whatever ; and 
afterward, wherever circumstances made it proper, 
as when students from Church of England families 
came to him seeking it, to follow this up with de- 
tailed, systematic, denominational instruction. No 
man perhaps ever had a deeper general religious 
nature than he, and at the same time few have 
more firmly believed in the value of specific church 
organization. He prepared the way for acceptance 
of, and membership in the latter, by a thorough 
culture of the former. Though he never seems to 
have systematized the religious but non-sectarian 
part of his instruction, he ever made distinctive 
and powerful use of it, as a preliminary to the 
other. 

One of his pupils says, ^^ Neither generally in 
ordinary conversation, nor in his walks with his 
pupils, was his style of speaking directly or mainly 
religious ; but he was ever ready to discuss any 
religious question ; whilst the depth and truth of 
his nature, and the earnestness of his religious 
convictions and feelings were bursting forth, so as 
to make it strongh^ felt that his life, both outward 
and inward, was rooted in God." He taught his 
pupils " to note in any common worK that they 
read such judgments of men and things, and such 
a tone in speaking of them as are manifestly at 
variance with the spirit of God." "• No direct in- 



278 A NEW LIFE IN EDUCATION". 

stniction could leave on their minds a livelier 
image of his disgust at moral evil, than the black 
cloud of indignation which passed over his face 
when speaking of the crimes of Napoleon, or of 
Caesar, and the dead pause which followed as if 
the acts had just been committed in his very pres- 
ence." Yet, with the purpose of making the 
teaching of the school more unsectarian, he 
dropped an existing custom of devoting all the 
lessons in the Passion week to the New Testament. 
Whatever dogmatical instruction he gave was 
conveyed almost entirely in a practical or exegeti- 
cal shape ; " the great proportion of his interpreta- 
tions were such as most of his pupils, of whatever 
opinions, eagerly collected and preserved for their 
own use in after life." While in his general in- 
struction he avoided theological instruction as 
such, to inquiring souls he freely opened his 
mind, and used forms and ceremonies and the doc- 
trines of the church. In all his instruction we 
find this distinction ; first, the principles of relig- 
ion and morality for all, and self-investigation of 
them by the student ; afterward the doctrines of 
the church, for those who came under his care as a 
minister of the Church of England. Hence Ar- 
nold's method, the most successful ever applied in 
general public education, was essentially the 
method advt)cated here. 

JESUS' METHOD, 

It was also the method of Jesus, the greatest of 



EELIGION IN EDUCATION. 279 

all teachers. He began the Sermon on the Mount 
with general religious truths : — '' Blessed are the 
poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of 

heaven." ^' Blessed are they which do 

hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they 

shall be filled." ^' Blessed are the pure in 

heart : for the}^ shall see God." He then proceeds 
to speak of himself and his own distinctive mes- 
sage. In his discourse to Xicodemus, he gives 
first a marvelous and unapproachably perfect state- 
ment of the general doctrine of the need of a new 
birth. After he has enforced this truth in masterly 
style and with overpowering effect, he speaks of 
himself as the Saviour who can work this profound 
change in the soul. He gave the woman at the 
well general religious instruction in the words, 
'* Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye 
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, 
worship the Father . . . God is a spirit ; and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth," before he clearly revealed himself as the 
Messiah. The same general method is observable 
in all his teaching. He instituted forms and cere- 
monies among his disciples, onl}^ after thorough 
preliminary culture of their general religious na- 
ture ; the Lord's Supper was instituted at the very 
close of his ministry. 

Thus Jesus teaches first, religion, and then, 
Christianity^ He profoundly moves the general 
religious nature and thence rises to himself and 
his special doctrines and observances, and to an 



280 A NEW LIFE IK EDUCATION. 

expression of their absolute and unapproachable 
value. 

In him and his teaching we have perfectly ex- 
emplified what modern education so greatly lacks 
for its perfection. The new life needed by educa- 
tion begins and ends in Christ. This needed new 
life is but a fuller measure of the old but ever new 
life which is in him. 

A SYMBOL OF THE NEW LIFE, 

The visitor to the city of Boston sees much that 
is impressive and instructive. He sees the massive 
and imposing Bunker Hill Monument, pointing up- 
ward like the granite finger of New England ; it 
seems to him a symbol of New England character, 
as the Coliseum is of Roman, and the Parthenon 
of Greek character. He sees the beautiful gold- 
covered dome of the State House, floating up over 
the city, like the benign and radiant sun of New 
England culture made visible. He sees the Boston 
Public Library, parent by inspiration of scores and 
hundreds of other public libraries. But when he 
visits in South Boston the Institution for the 
Training of the Blind, he sees something more im- 
pressive than all that has preceded. This is the 
band of a child, who, like Laura Bridgman, was 
born deaf, dumb and blind, and in whom the senses 
of taste and smell are also defective. The child 
has only one perfect sense, that of touch. He sees 
the trained hand through which such a child lives 
and speaks. How wonderful is that hand, giving 



EELIGION IN EDUCATION. 281 

and receiving messages, the swiftly moving fingers 
vibrating almost into invisibility. The coarse 
nerves have been trained till each finger can talk 
and hear. One almost imagines that the rosy fin- 
ger tips can see. The five fingers have been 
trained to be the five senses. The hand has be- 
come an organ auditor}^, optical, vocal, and spirit- 
ual since it is capable of worship and of praj^er. 

That hand is a sj^mbol of what good education 
can do, how it can transform the whole nature. It 
is most impressive of all, since such training, men- 
tal, ph3^sical, religious, is that which makes Bunker 
Hill monuments, State House domes, and Boston 
Public Libraries possible. It is by such hands, 
and b}^ souls transformed like them, that a new and 
better world is to be made. The twentieth century 
must possess such hands and such souls, if it is to 
take part in that great work, and enter fully into its 
results. 



THE END. 



APPENDIX. 



CHAPTER I. 

1. P. 22. Charles Dudley Warner says {Harper'' s3IontJily, 
April, 1893, p. 800) : " one per cent, of the arable land in the 
cotton States will produce all the cotton the world can 
use." Five per cent, of the land will certainly do this, and 
probably Warner's estimate is correct if the most fertile 
land be chosen and the best possible methods of cultivation 
employed. 

2. P. 23. See address of Captain Noble before Section 
G. of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, 1890. Nature, vol. 42, p. 501. 

3. P. 24. See estimate of Berlin Bureau of Statistics, 
Nature, vol. 36, p. 615. 

See also Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education 
for the year 1889-90, p. xxiii. From the latter it also ap- 
pears that there was ten times as much steam power in the 
United States in 1890, as existed in the whole world in 
1840. 

In this connection, Rankine's ^'The Steam Engine," p. 
429, should be consulted, where it is stated that the actual 
or efficient horse power of steam engines is from IJ to 5 
times as great as the nominal horse power. 

4. P. 24. Prof. C. A. Young says in his book on The 
Sun, p. 256, " taking the whole surface of the earth, the 
average energy received from the sun is . . . one 
horse-power continuously acting, to every thirty square 
feet of the earth's surface." The areas of New York 
and Brooklyn together are not less than 66.5 sq. miles, or 
42,500 acres. Since there are 43,560 sq. ft. in an acre, 
sunlight falling on these two cities = 4 2 s o o^x _4_3_^j6 o = 

(283) 



284 APPENDIX. 

61,710,000 horse-power, which exceeds considerably the 
estimate of the Berlin Bureau and slightly that made at a 
later date and given by the Commissioner of Education. 
Since horse-power as actually used in steam engines does 
not act continuously owing to various causes, there is a large 
margin of excess in the sunlight falling on these cities, over 
steam power in actual use in the world. 

In regard to the value of the sunlight falling on the State 
of Pennsylvania, a computation in round numbers, increas- 
ing unfavorable numbers and diminishing favorable ones is 
as follows. Taking the number of men in the state as 
under two millions, the area as more than 40,000 square 
nailes, the value of a day's labor by one man as one dollar, 
and the sunlight falling on 70 square miles as equal to the 
labor of one thousand millions of men, the value of the sun- 
light falling on the State of Pennsylvania in a week for 
each man is -^-^-e^OyJi^o^^oO/g^/fi-^i-i = 2,000,000 dollars. 
If this sunlight be used in conjunction with labor saving 
machinery, its value on a moderate estimate is $6,000,000. 

5. P. 25. This estimate, that labor saving machinery 
increases the power of steam twofold, is no doubt far within 
the facts. In some departments of work the increase is 
fifty or one hundred fold. Some estimate machinery as 
increasing the power of steam twenty fold on the average. 
But in the comparison between ancient, human and modern 
mechanical slaves, some allowance should be made for the 
fact that formerly workers in proportion to their numbers 
were aided by more animal power, and more wind power 
as for example in navigation. 

6. P. 26. A paper read before the Eoyal Statistical 
Society by Mr. R. Giffen, the substance of which is given 
in Nature^ vol. 41, p. 211, shows that since the year 1600, 
wealth has increased in the United Kingdom from £22 per 
capita, to £270 per capita. For facts in regard to deaths in 
London poor houses, see Report of Registrar General of 
Great Britain quoted in the Arena^ March, 1893, pp. 397-8. 



APPENDIX. 285 

For number of evictions in New York City, see Arena, Feb. 
1891, p. 375. 

For increase in wealth and population of the United 
States, see U. S. Census for 1880 and 1890. 

7. P. 28. See Harper^ s Magazine, vol. 76, pp. 564-5. 

8. P. 38. See Nature, vol. 47, p. 210. 

For other of the facts cited in this connection, see also 
vol. 42, p. 291, and vol. 41, p. 266. 

CHAPTER II. 

1. p. 43. See facts presented and inference drawn, on 
p. 153 of Teaching and History of Mathematics in the 
United States, by Florian Cajori. 

2. P. 46. See '^ My Class in Geometry " by George lies, 
Pupular Science Monthly, November, 1890. 

3. P. 53. See Edersheim^s Life and Times of Jesus 
the Messiah, vol. 1, p. 231. 

For other of the citations in this chapter from the same 
author, see vol. 1, pp. 41-2, 94, 98, 223, 437, and vol. 2, 
p. 381. 

CHAPTER III. 

1. P. 65. For dwarf oaks of Japan, see Nature, vol. 41, 
p. 86 ; for giant oaks of India, see Nature, vol. 43, p. 7. 

2. P. 67. See article, Saurians, Encyc. Britt., also 
Nature, vol. 48, p. 302. 

For giant earthworms of Australia, see Nature, vol. 39, 
p. 394. 

3. P. 70. For this and other of the facts pertaining to 
natural history used in this chapter, see The Naturalist 
in La Plata by W. H. Hudson. 

CHAPTER Y. 

1. P. 108. See ''Talks with Edison," Harper^ s Maga- 
zine, Feb. 1890, vol. 80, p. 434. 

2. P. 115. Men and Books, p. 307. 



286 APPENDIX. 

3. P. 118. ^'An Academic Sketch" in the University 
Magazine, July, 1893, p. 472. 

CHAPTER VI. 

1. P. 126. Quoted in Nature, vol. 47, pp. 280 and 374. 
In the same place the statement is made that Dr. de la 

Tourette expresses the same view with Dr. Brinton in the 
Journal de Medeeine, 

2. P. 133. See Nature, vol. 44, p. 458. 

3. P. 136. Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education 
for year 1888-89, pp. 210-11, 606-10. 

4. P. 138. Educational Review, vol. 3, p. 80. 

CHAPTER VII. 

1. P. 148. Report U. S. Commissioner of Education for 
year 1888-89, p. 72. 

2. P. 148. Nature, vol. 42, 511. 

3. P. 149. Report U. S. Commissioner of Education for 
year 1888-89, pp. 48, 113, 147, and elsewhere. 

For Finland, see same, p. 235. 

4. P. 151. Nature, vol. 44, pp. 451, 469. 

5. See Appleton^s Annual Encyclopoedia, vol. 11, p. 478, 
and Century Magazine, March, 1893, vol. 45, p. 795. 

Emphasis is laid on the fact that a public library should 
be absolutely free. It is found that even a slight fee im- 
mensely cuts down the circulation. As an example of the 
extraordinary usefulness of entirely free circulating public 
libraries, see experience of New York City, Appleton's 
Annual Enclyclopoedia, vol. 11, p. 649. 

The Circular of Information, No. 7, 1891, published by 
the Bureau of Education, states that the number of volumes 
in Public Libraries in the United States increased 12,000,000^ 
between the years 1886 and 1891. Hence these Libraries 
now contain more than one volume for every two inhab- 
itants. 



APPENDIX. 287 

6. P. 155. E. G. Moulton, quoted in Eeport of U. S. 
Commissiouer of Education 1888-89, p. 645. 

7. P. 159. See his book on Hereditary Genius. 

CHAPTEE IX. 

1. P. 178. See Compayre's History of Pedagogy, p. 9, 
also Edersheini's ' ' Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 
vol. i, p. 230. 

2. P. 181. Nature, vol. 44, pp. 574, 585. 

3. P. 189. See Eeport of U. S. Commissioner of Educa- 
tion for year 1888-9, p. 655. 

4. P. 196. Educational Review, Feb. 1892, vol. 3, p. 177. 

5. P. 199. For the various references to Thomas Ar- 
nold, see Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, by 
Dean Stanley, vol. 1. chapter iii ; also vol. 1, pp. 47, 52, 221. 

CHAPTEE X. 

1. P. 210. Plutarch's Morals, Translated from the 
Greek by several hands. Corrected and Eevised by Wil- 
liam W. Goodwin, Ph. D., vol. 5, pp. 379-380. 

CHAPTEE XL 

1. P. 225. Decree of July 18, 1882, art. 5. 

See Eeport of U. S. Commissioner of Education for year 
1888-89, p. 458. Numerous other citations in this chapter 
are from the same, source. 

2. P. 226. Century Magazine, Dec, 1890, vol. 41, p. 275. 

3. P. 230. Men and Books, p. 263. 

4. P. 233. See Educational Review^ April, 1892, vol. 3, 
p. 355. 

CHAPTEE XII. 

1. P. 247. New England Magazine, Dec, 1892. 

2. P. 249. History of Pedagogy, p. 304. 

3. P. 250. See " The Eecord of Virtue," Century Maga- 
zine, Dec, 1890, vol. 41, p. 238. 



288 APPENDIX. 

4. P. 260. In the year 1892, over Dine million tons of 
pig iron were produced and used in the United States, (see 
Bulletin of American Iron and Steel Association, Jan. 18, 
1893), that is, more than 18,000,000,000 R)s. If a pound of 
bread were eaten each day by each inhabitant, the total 
weight of bread consumed per annum, is less than 24.000- 
000,000 lbs. 

The steam hammer referred to is the one at South Beth- 
lehem, Pa. 

5 P. 264. See Herbert Spencer's Education, chapter 1, 
where the author quotes Prof. Huxley. 

6. P. 265. See Educational Beview, Sept., 1892, vol. 4, 
p. 117. 

7. P. 266. See Report of U. S. Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, year 1888-1889, pp. 437-8. 

8. P. 266. See Romanism vs. The Public School Sys- 
tem, by Daniel Dorchester, D.D., p. 162. For proportion 
of Catholic children in the Parochial schools, see same 
book, pp. 120-1, where statistics are quoted from Sadlier's 
Catholic Directory, Ordo and Almanac, year 1888. 

9. P. 272. Harper's Magazine, April, 1893, vol. 86,- 
p. 709. 



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